Caterina Schembri
Photo credit: Néstor Romero Clemente
“Schembri’s voice is fairly new on the scene (…) but she’s already got a distinctive sound.” – Brendan Finan, Journal of Music, 2024
Caterina Schembri is an Italian-Colombian composer and producer based in Dublin. Her work traverses harmonic exploration, literary motifs, multidisciplinary intersections, symbolic meaning, and diverse orchestrations within acoustic and hybrid ensembles. Connections with visual imagery and text are recurrent in her music, often using original written material.
Her debut album, Sea Salt & Turpentine, featuring Ficino Ensemble and vocalist Michelle O’Rourke, was released in November 2024 on the Ergodos label with a launch concert at the National Concert Hall of Ireland. The album was praised as “every bit as rich as its title, its sound world always reaching towards something you might touch or smell” (Luke Clancy, RTÉ Culture File) and as having “a real sense of through-line, even of narrative” (Brendan Finan, Journal of Music). Her new EP A Birch Forest Seen, Imagined, and Remembered, composed for pianist Máire Carroll, was released in March 2026 on the Ergodos label with a launch concert at the Finding a Voice Festival.
Schembri has composed for a wide range of musicians and ensembles, including Ficino Ensemble, Tonnta, Chamber Choir Ireland, The National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Lumiere Quartet, ConTempo Quartet, Spilliaert Trio, Irish Youth Choir, the UCD Choral Scholars, the Dublin Viols, members of the UCDSO, percussion ensemble Tridio, vocalist Michelle O’Rourke, violist Nathan Sherman, pianist Máire Carroll, and cellist Kate Ellis.
Her orchestral work Taraxacum premiered at the National Concert Hall with the National Symphony Orchestra in January 2026. She was selected as a CMC Emerging Composer for 2024–2025 and participated in Choral Sketches, developing a piece premiered by Chamber Choir Ireland in 2025 and selected to represent the Irish Section at the 2026 ISCM World New Music Days Festival in Bucharest, Romania. Recent commissions include a new work for the Irish Youth Choir premiered in 2025, the Lumiere Quartet (2024 national tour) and a piece for MoLI and the DFA’s 2023 Bloomsday video. She has also received Arts Council of Ireland Music Bursaries in 2022 and 2024 and premiered a work at New Music Dublin in 2022.
Her music has been featured in short films across the UK, Spain, Colombia, the USA, Greece, Ireland, and Costa Rica. She has also worked as an orchestrator and in score preparation for TV and film productions in Ireland, the UK, Malaysia, and Korea, and has produced recordings for Ergodos, Parma Records, and Irish National Opera.