Gavan Ring rehearses The Celestial Stranger. with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in May 2024.

The stranger is ‘a person from another world’ smitten by his discovery of the Earth: ‘this little star, so wide and so full of mysteries’.

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Gavan Ring gives the Irish premiere of The Celestial Stranger in Dublin with the National Symphony Orchestra.

Conducted. by Lina González-Granados, the concert contains Debussy’s iconic Prélude à l’après-midi d’une faune and Rachmaninov’s impassioned Second Symphony.

From the National Concert Hall Website:

Stephen McNeff was born in Belfast but grew up in South Wales. He came to attention for his music for theatre and opera in the UK and Canada.

The Celestial Stranger was inspired by the discovery of forgotten texts by the 17th-century cleric and mystic, Thomas Traherne, and draws on texts by Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas and other poets.