Hot Press favourite Ciaran Lavery is the winner of the Northern Ireland Music Prize 2016. The singer songwriter’s second album, Let Bad In was selected as the best release of the year by a selection of music industry and media figures from Northern Ireland.

Lavery first achieved widespread national recognition as the winner of the Hot Press-run talent competition, The Big Break, in association with Alcatel – and the man from Aghagallon in Country Antrim has since gone from strength to strength. While he can accurately be described as a singer-songwriter, he couldn't be further from the stereotype, with his eatraordinary, ragged, powerful voice marking him out as both idiosyncratic and different.

2016 has been an incredible year already for Ciaran, from clocking up over 56 million streams on Spotify, to performing at Willie Nelson’s range as part of South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, as well as touring the USA, Canada and Europe. He is currently recording his third record and plans to release a live album on December 9.

The Belfast event at the Mandela Hall also saw the presentation of a special Oh Yeah Legend Award to Ash. This was presented by Stuart Fleming from PRS for Music, who sponsored the award. Ash who are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut 1977 performed the album in full to a rapturous and sold out Mandela.

The NI Music Prize is produced by the Oh Yeah music centre, Belfast’s dedicated music hub, and is also supported by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The event is the culmination of a nine-day celebration of gigs, showcases, workshops and community events called Sound of Belfast.

Charlotte Dryden, CEO of Oh Yeah said: “The shortlist was outstanding again this year, but Ciaran Lavery is such a worthy winner. Northern Irish artists are doing us proud, locally, nationally and internationally making an impact. The Sound of Belfast festival programme continues to promote the great potential and celebrated names of NI Music from grassroots to celebrated names. Ciaran Lavery is an artist to be celebrated and we think he has an amazing future ahead of him."

Wtch Ciaran Lavery perform two original tracks for Hot Press' Storeroom Sessions:

Previous winners of the NI Music Prize are:

2015 – SOAK – Before We Forgot How To Dream

2014 – Robyn G Shiels – The Blood Of The Innocents

2013 – Foy Vance – Joy of Nothing