RIAM is celebrating the success of its students and staff recognised at the 2025 NCH Young Musician and Composer Awards. Violinist Sam Monedero Egan and cellist Elizabeth Troup, both RIAM Young Artists, share the NCH Young Musician Award for String Players with fellow winner violinist Scarlett Xu, a €10,000 bursary that supports outstanding emerging string players. Composer and RIAM Group Piano tutor Aoife Kavanagh has received the 2025 Jerome Hynes Young Composer Award.
Sam, Elizabeth and Scarlett’s winning performances impressed adjudicators Joe Csibi, Head of Orchestra and Choirs at the National Concert Hall, David Daly, Principal Double Bass with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and Ioana Petcu Colan, Leader of the Ulster Orchestra. Sam performed Bach’s Partita No. 3 BWV 1006 and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, while Elizabeth presented Fauré’s Après un Rêve, Op. 7 and Davidov’s At the Fountain.
Sam joined the RIAM Young Artist Programme this year to study with Lynda O’Connor. He began the violin at the age of six and has built a strong profile as both soloist and ensemble leader. He won the 2025 RIAM John Pollard Award, reached the final of the Dublin Philharmonic Society Junior Solo Competition, and leads both the Dublin Youth Orchestra and the RIAM Symphony Orchestra. He is also a member of the Ulster Youth Orchestra.
Elizabeth studies cello with Dr Annette Cleary and is a member of both the RIAM Young Artist Programme and the Eversheds Accelerated Academy Programme. She has earned national recognition at Feis Ceoil for both cello and chamber music, won the RIAM Junior Solo Competition in 2022, and received the Stephen Vernon Award in the 2023 John Pollard Competition. Past recipients of the NCH Young Musician Award include Julieanne Forrest, Claire O’Connor, Fiachra de hÓra, Callum Owens, Kevin Jansson, Sarah Brazil and Adam Joyce.
Composer Aoife Kavanagh, RIAM Group Piano tutor, has been awarded the 2025 Jerome Hynes Young Composer Award, which carries a €2,500 prize and a commission for a new work to be premiered at the National Concert Hall. This year’s adjudicators were Seán Doherty, Assistant Professor of Music at DCU, and composer Emma O’Halloran.
Aoife’s work spans concert music, theatre, dance and film, and has been performed throughout Ireland by artists including the Irish Youth Training Choir, bass baritone Kevin Neville and cellist Adrian Mantu. She recently won the West Cork Chamber Music Festival Young Composers Competition 2025 for her quartet Every Cloud Passes Over, premiered by the Magnolia Quartet. Other recent premieres include Dreamscape for solo piano, commissioned by the Embassy of Poland and performed at RIAM by Tamara Niekludow.
From 2021 to 2023, Aoife took part in the Contemporary Music Centre’s Emerging Composer Scheme. Previous winners of the Jerome Hynes Award include Robin Haigh, Harry O’Connor, Anselm McDonnell, Timothy Ethan Doyle, Christopher Moriarty, Eoghan Desmond, Amanda Feery and Emma O’Halloran. The award commemorates Jerome Hynes, former Chief Executive of Wexford Festival Opera, former Deputy Chair of the Arts Council and a former member of the National Concert Hall Board.
RIAM congratulates Sam, Elizabeth and Aoife on these significant achievements, and thanks the National Concert Hall for its continued support of emerging performers and composers.