bands of the 1960s and 1970s: such as The Who and Led Zeppelin, first encountered in his mother's LP collection. Jazz: predominantly artists recorded on the Blue Note label in the 1950s and 1960s jazz, an interest first explored in his father's LP collection. Minimalist music An article in The Irish Times on 23 November 2010 suggested that O'Regan is also interested in his Irish heritage. Published on the occasion of the first performance of Acallam na Senórach (a setting of The Middle Irish narrative of the same name), the article stated that Sir William Rowan Hamilton is a direct ancestor of O'Regan (his great-great-great-grandfather), whose middle name is Hamilton. Critical reception His 2006 debut disc, VOICES (Collegium Records COL CD 130), recorded by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, was released to critical acclaim, heralding O'Regan as "one of the most original and eloquent of young British composers" (The Observer, London), "breathing new life into the idiom" (The Daily Telegraph, London). International Record Review declared the recording "a committed, persuasive and highly accomplished performance of an exceptional composing voice of our time", while BBC Music Magazine gave the disc a double five-star rating. Scattered Rhymes (2008), O'Regan's first disc from Harmonia Mundi, was described as "a stunning recording" (BBC Radio 3 CD Review), "exquisite and delicate" (The Washington Post), "a fascinating disc" (The Daily Telegraph, London) and "typically unfaultable" (BBC Music Magazine). After the June 2006 premiere of the eponymous work at the Spitalfields Festival, Geoff Brown, in The Times (London), described "O'Regan's gift for lyric flight [as] boundless. You might have to reach back to Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, or even Tallis, to find another British vocal work so exultant." The 2008 release of Threshold of Night marked O'Regan's international breakthrough. The disc debuted at No. 10 on the Billboard chart and garnered two GRAMMY nominations in 2009 before going on to receive wide critical acclaim. The 2010 BBC Proms premiere of Latent Manifest performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Litton, was widely reviewed in London: "[a] personal canvas, taking us a long way from a literal reworking into the realms of evanescent fantasy, with delicately evocative results" (The Guardian, London), "a beguiling response to response itself – a mirage of intimations and allusions to [O'Regan's] own experience of hearing Bach's third solo Violin Sonata" (The Times, London), "a gracefully-controlled meditation on a single