The Church & General/Bus Eireann Composition Workshops encourage school pupils to compose choral music, which is then performed by the National Chamber Choir and commented on by the performers and by visiting composers.

This year's concert took place in Dublin Castle's St Patrick's Hall on Tuesday night. The NCC, conducted by Colin Mawby and David Brophy performed 17 pieces by pupils from 12 schools in Ireland, north and south.

For anyone involved in music education this was an encouraging experience, despite the compositions' conservative inclinations. art and Judith Weir. Yet There was no shortage of ideas in this concert, either in music, in texts (some written by the composers), or in the way the two interacted, This was as true of those pieces written by groups as of those conceived by one person. The challenges of choral composition were wittily depicted in The Choral Composer's Hand- book, specially composed by the NCC's apprentice composer, Melanie Brown.

All the composers did well. But, at the risk of seeming invidious, I must say that I was especially impressed by Brid Cannon's From a Railway Carriage, Michelle Maher's The Tom Cat and Anne Marie Liddy's Tempest, which was an unsurprising winner of the Gerard Victory Memorial Prize.