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BIOG MATERIAL
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At the heart of Darren's musical life is style, versatility, and community spirit.
He was appointed as Principal Trumpet of the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland in 2025 - this is the band formerly known as the RTE National Symphony Orchestra.
Darren enjoys doing a lot of outreach work along with playing in concert halls. He is so proud to have been a part of the (please click:) Multi-Story Orchestra who use music as a force for positive social impact. You can see their latest work with children who recently lost a classmate to gang crime, and how they worked together on designing, composing, and performing The Endz, as a tribute to a lost friend.
Darren was awarded the Patricia Prindl Prize for Outreach by the Worshipful Company of Musicians in London, 2017.
Having chosen early on in his student days to specialise on three instruments,
he now regularly performs on modern trumpet, baroque trumpet, and cornetto.
Darren has played at the Luzern Festival with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (dir. Bernard Haitink), the infamous Brandenburg Concerto no.2 by Bach with the
Irish Baroque Orchestra (dir. Peter Whelan), and Monteverdi's Vespers 1610 with The Sixteen (dir. Harry Christophers). He has toured with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir, played at the BBC Proms with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, regularly performed with his friend (and Diapason d'Or winner) Lambert Colson and Ensemble InAlto, and also got to play with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on their recording of the Beethoven Symphonies (dir. Yannick Nezet Seguin).
Darren has also appeared at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in a production of Othello that
involved samba dancing with Sir Mark Rylance (The BFG, Bridge of Spies, Dunkirk),
and Andre Holland (Moonlight, The Eddy).
As well as developing his volleyball skills in the pre-show warm-ups,
the whole experience led to his questionable decision to learn the bagpipes.... a choice that proved a winner when he was asked to play his best friend down the aisle on her wedding day in Scotland.
Darren is delighted to have been appointed as trumpet teacher at TUDublin Conservatoire, having previously been an Assistant Lecturer at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and Assistant Lecturer at the Cork School of Music. He has also recently been invited by one of his first teachers, Tom Rainer, to teach on the Brass Academy courses.
Darren completed his Masters in Music at the Royal Academy of Music, London and was awarded a DipRAM for his final recital performance. He was made an ARAM (Associate of the Royal Academy of Music) in 2024. Previously he had done his BMus at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
A few years after leaving RAM, Darren also completed a second Masters on the historical musical instrument Cornetto at the Brussels Royal Conservatory with Lambert Colson.
Extra Info / Background
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Ever since Darren started playing in his school trad jazz band, he realised there was more to music than playing dots on a page.
There was something about having to memorise jazz tunes and improvising on them that made a huge difference to him as a musician. He struggled to balance his slightly awkward and shy personality with being the front man in a jazz band, but every so often he forgot himself and just enjoyed the music. He noticed these were the performances that left audiences wildest, and coincidentally him and the other band members too. Luckily because this music required him to play without reading too carefully, he could easily get into that zone. Since discovering this, Darren's goal has always been to try and make the music sound like it wasn't written down.
Years later Darren is still enjoying the challenge and he is convinced that this concept overlaps (and even benefits) the many musical styles, eras, and instruments that he plays. It might seem strange but he finds his teenage jazzing experience most useful when he is having to ornament and improvise in baroque and renaissance music. Darren always remembers talking with one particular cornetto colleague who told him that William Byrd must have been like the Dizzy Gillespie of his day.
As a coping mechanism for nerves on stage, Darren sometimes finds it helpful to think of the composer humming their melodies to themselves. Then he'll try and play that melody as he hears the composer singing it. In particular, music like Mahler where there are so many directions on the music, can feel quite claustrophobic to read. So Darren always makes sure he listens to the Mahler Plays Mahler CD where players of the Vienna Philharmonic and NY Philharmonic talk about "Herr Mahler" as an nervously energetic man walking with an unsteady gait.
After studying with Tom Rainer, Darren went to the Guildhall School to do his BMus in trumpet performance (2008-12), and then a Masters degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London (2012-14) where he was awarded a DipRAM for the quality of his final recital. He also took advantage of the ERASMUS Scheme by studying in The Hague, and recently gained a second Masters Degree in cornetto and historical performance with Lambert Colson at the Royal Brussels Conservatoire.
Darren is a big fan of Wynton Marsalis' work, not just as a player but also for using music and influence as a social force for good. Darren is very aware (almost embarassed) of the opportunities afforded to him growing up, and realises that not everybody gets the same chances he did. He is very conscious that music has the possibility to help everybody, and finds it heart-breaking when elitism is reinforced in the industry. This is why he is so rpoud to be a part fo the MultiStory Orchestra who use music as a force for positive social change.