David Coonan is a composer and multidisciplinary artist. His work, characterized by an equal depth of thought and feeling, is diverse in form/output yet unified in intent/preoccupation — music that is meticulously wild (or possibly vice versa) co-exists gracefully with art objects, moving bodies, political critiques, tragic stories, campy jokes — always aiming to respond to the full complexity of the world as fully as possible.

Multidisciplinary projects form the major focus of his practice, and he has made work for theatre, dance, film, and visual art spaces. Opera commissions include two works for Irish National Opera, both created with dramatist/librettist Carys D. Coburn: verballing, a short video opera commissioned as part of Irish National Opera’s 20 Shots of Opera (2020), and Horse Ape Bird, a youth opera commissioned jointly by Irish National Opera and Music Generation (Ireland’s National Music Education Programme) as both organizations’ first-ever youth opera. Other recent notable collaborations include Dēmos — a multi-part music and dance project, comprising a series of films as well an evening-length performance, created with Irish choreographer Liz Roche; the production, commissioned by Dublin Dance Festival and the Abbey Theatre, in partnership with Crash Ensemble and New Music Dublin, was premiered by Liz Roche Company and Crash Ensemble as part of the 2021 Dublin Dance Festival — and Furtive Tears, Salomé’s Lament — a film score for an installation — created with visual artist Niamh McCann for the solo exhibition Furtive Tears at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, 2018/19.

His concert works — including solo instrumental, chamber, orchestral, vocal, and choral music — have been commissioned/performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, Chamber Choir Ireland, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, the Choir of the Chapels Royal HM Tower of London, the RTÉ Contempo Quartet and Gildas Quartet, and by conductors including François-Xavier Roth, Pierre-André Valade, and Elgar Howarth.

Recent and upcoming projects include the premiere of Spenser for soprano, bass viol, and archlute (commissioned by Music Network for Anna Dennis, Liam Byrne, and Jonas Nordberg, as part of a nationwide tour in November 2023), a new work for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in collaboration with filmmaker Laura Sheeran (New Music Dublin Festival, 2025), and a large-scale music-theatre composition for solo piano, electronics, and video (a collaboration with New-York-based Irish pianist Isabelle O’Connell, Carys Coburn and Niamh McCann).

He has been the recipient of awards including the Irish Arts Council’s 2016 Next Generation Award and the Jerome Hynes Composition Award (NCH, Dublin), and has held residencies at the Contemporary Music Centre (Dublin), the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris). He studied at Trinity College Dublin and undertook postgraduate study at the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he won the DipRAM award for ‘outstanding final portfolio’, and was awarded his PhD in 2018. He lives in Dublin.