The Music Department boasts a vibrant community of postgraduate researchers working across the entire range of the Department's research specialisms. Read more about our PhD students below.
Maynooth University Department of Music
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Shauna Caffrey
Biography
Shauna Louise Caffrey (she/her, sí/í) is an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholar at the department of Music, Maynooth University. Her PhD project, ‘Wayward Sisters: Witchcraft, Music and Magic on the Seventeenth-Century Stage’, explores the origins and impact of onstage sorceresses in Early Modern theatrical traditions, with a focus on the operatic stage. Inspired by her lifelong passion for folklore and mythology, her research seeks to explore the intersections of oral and literate cultures in Early Modern Europe, and to interrogate the ideologies transmitted through operatic archetypes.
She graduated with first class honours in both her B.A. (Trinity College, Dublin) and M.A. Music and Cultural History (University College Cork), and was awarded the Mahaffy Memorial Prize for her research into the origins and appearance of witchcraft in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in 2017, and the Society for Musicology in Ireland’s 2019 Alison Dunlop Postgraduate Prize. Shauna is a founding member of experimental music collective Analog On, with whom she has performed throughout Ireland and in the U.S.A. She is also a performance artist and dancer, and received the title Mx Horror 2020 for her performances at Ireland's Women in Horror Festival.
Research Interests
● Restoration Theatre Music
● Liminality in Performance
● The Role of Music in Folklore and Mythology
● Queerness in Opera and Theatre Music
● Music and The Gothic
● Gender and Sexuality in Popular Music
● Experimental Music Performance
● Music and Trauma Studies
● Music and Sound in Horror Cinema
● Music in/as Ritual
Thesis
'Wayward Sisters': Witchcraft, Music and Magic on the Seventeenth-Century Stage
The witch has long been a subject of fascination for artists and audience members alike. Revered, feared, and the alternating subject of love or loathing, the witch has evolved from a seemingly omnipresent figure in world folklore, to the subject of musical, theatrical, and—in the last century—cinematic works. Manifesting in myriad guises and under numerous titles, today the witch presents ever more artistic potential, as the history of witchcraft is re-examined, the plight of the accused reinterrogated, leaving notions of cackling, broom-wielding spell-smiths cast aside. Witches have become the heroes and heroines of the postmodern age; the subject of children’s books, comedy shows, and advertising campaigns, the apprehension with which the subject of witchcraft was treated in the 16th and 17th centuries has largely dissolved. But what of these origins? What of the cackling, malevolent weavers of magic that inspired such terror and chaos on the Early Modern and Baroque stage, of the women and men whose trials have burned such a pregnant image into the Western psyche, and of the cultures that birthed them? The development of opera in the Baroque period saw the integration of the witch from folklore, drama and literature into the emerging genre. While sorceresses such as Armide and Medea terrorized the European stage, Britain experienced witchcraft of a different sort in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and countless masques and anti-masques. This project seeks to examine these witches and their magic on the seventeenth-century stage, to
provide a cultural history of their origins, and to analyse their appearances. By shedding light on the witches' first significant foray into popular culture, this project will illuminate their prominent place in the modern psyche, as an alternating subject of fear and passion, and in their recent emergence as a feminist icon.
Professional Development/Experience
Teaching Assistant, Music and Trauma Studies (University College Cork), 2017-2018.
Contributor, GoldenPlec Classical, 2016-present
Course Instructor, Celtic Studies, Older Student Course (Centre for Talented Youth Ireland), 2019.
Course Instructor, Various Young Student courses, incl. Greek & Roman Mythology, Fantastic Beasts & How to Write Them (Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland) 2016-present
Teaching Assistant (Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland), 2014-2018.
Archive Manager, Trinity College Music Department Shellac & Vinyl Record Archive, 2014-2016.
Student Steering Committee Member, Society for Musicology in Ireland, 2020-present.
Conducting Masterclass with Eimear Noone, IMRO, August 2018
Active Music Making: The Kodály Approach Summer Course, Kodály Society of Ireland, 2014
Reference Presentations / Posters / Publications & Abstracts / Patents Publications:
Caffrey, Shauna Louise. ‘Mother, Monstrous: Motherhood, Grief, and the Supernatural in Marc- Antoine Charpentier’s Médée’. Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, no. 17 (2018): 13.
Presentations:
'Voicing the Liminal: Examining Gender and Liminal Identities through the voices of Operatic Witches', McGill Music Graduate Symposium, McGill University, March 2021.
'Wayward Sisters': Witches, Magic and Music on the Seventeenth-Century Stage’, Society for Musicology in Ireland Postgraduate Plenary, January 2021.
‘Sounding Wicked: Occult Soundscapes in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’, Gothflix 2020, Lancaster University, February 2020.
‘Otherworldly Thresholds: Liminality and Magic in Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen’, Society for Musicology in Ireland Annual Plenary Conference, Maynooth University, June 2019.
‘‘Like Dismal Ravens Crying': Supernatural Spectacle on the Restoration Stage’, Gothic Spectacle and Spectatorship, Lancaster University, June 2019.
‘Fear and Sensuality in New England: The Music of The Witch’,Folk Horror in the 21st Century, Falmouth University, September 2019.
‘Otherworldly Thresholds: Liminality and Magic in Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen’, Aigne Postgraduate Conference, UCC, December 2018.
‘She frights and frayes’: The Literary Origins of the Sorceress in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas’, Staging Witches: Gender, Power, and Alterity in Music AMS San Antonio Pre-Conference, October 2018.
Awards and Scholarships
Alison Dunlop Graduate Prize, 2019
Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship 2018-2022
Mahaffy Memorial Prize, 2017
Membership in Professional Associations/Affiliations
Society for Musicology in Ireland
Contact Details
Shauna.Caffrey.2021@mumail.ie
Chris Colloton
Chris Colloton
Biography
Chris is currently undertaking his PhD in Musicology under the supervision of Dr Laura Watson. Having studied jazz and contemporary music performance at Newpark Music Centre in Dublin in 2014, he then completed a master’s in jazz performance at TU Dublin in 2021, with his thesis ‘The Impact of the Picking Hand on Individuality in Jazz Guitar’ exploring the idiosyncratic approaches to guitar playing in jazz. Chris performs regularly throughout the South-east of Ireland with his jazz trio and runs his own music teaching business in Athboy, Co. Meath.
Research interests
Improvisation
Irish Jazz
Jazz guitar technique and playing approaches
Jazz performance
Thesis title
The Musical Language of Louis Stewart and its Impact on Jazz Culture
Thesis abstract
Louis Stewart (1944-2016) was an Irish jazz guitarist whose place in the history of jazz in Ireland is unparalleled. Over a period of fifty years, he performed and recorded prolifically, eventually enjoying international acclaim in the early 1970s after being recruited by the acclaimed American jazz musician Benny Goodman into his band. Stewart's success has had a profound impact on the jazz scene in Ireland and he is widely credited as the most important Irish jazz musician to date. However, despite having achieved international acclaim along with his unquestionable influence on the Irish jazz scene, there is a striking lack of in-depth knowledge about his musicality. To date, his improvisational techniques have yet to be put to page and studied, and there are no publications containing his musical scores, which is in stark contrast to other musicians of similar stature and influence. There is also little existing biographical research surrounding his approach to practice, performance, and wider views and opinions on jazz and music. Through the use of contemporary musical analysis techniques on selected music spanning Stewart's career, a comprehensive insight into the musical concepts that he utilised will be gained. These concepts will then be catalogued and compared with the concepts of current prominent jazz musicians that cite Stewart as an influence to determine whether his lasting impact in jazz is cultural, stylistic, or both. Documentation of oral history from former bandmates, students, and acquaintances will add an additional layer of understanding to this process by revealing Stewart's own musical perspectives and philosophies. It will also aid in quantifying Stewart's subsequent cultural impact in Ireland and abroad.
Professional development/experience
Instrumental teacher – Keys + Strings School of Music, Dublin (2016-2018)
Instrumental teacher – Castleknock School of Music, Dublin (2018-2022)
Performer (2009-Present)
Memberships of professional bodies
The Society of Musicology in Ireland
Awards
John and Pat Hume Doctoral Scholarship
Contact details
CHRISTOPHER.COLLOTON.2023@mumail.ie
Rory Corbett
Biography
Rory Corbett is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Music at Maynooth University. His research explores the cultural symbiosis of two of the United States’ most resilient and (as a consequence) most influential constituencies, Irish- and African-Americans, from the colonial period up to the mid-nineteenth century. The study also situates the banjo as a notable site of cross-cultural exchange between these two most prominent “others” in Anglo-American popular culture during this period.
The history of the banjo is one that crosses boundaries of class, race, gender and ethnicity and as such an overarching goal of Rory’s research is to tie in that transitory history, and the complexities arising from such with that of the Irish diaspora and their changing ethnic and racial status within antebellum American society.
Rory was awarded a first class honours for his B.A. in NUI Galway in Irish Studies, Sociology and Politics, and English in 2015. He was also awarded a first class honours for an M.A. in Ethnomusicology in University College Cork in 2019, for which he submitted a thesis which reconnected his own creative practice as a practitioner of the African American-derived clawhammer banjo style with that of the earliest blackface minstrel performers.
Rory’s research is funded the Irish Research Council. In 2019 he was also awarded a Travelling Studentship by the National University of Ireland for the purposes of undertaking substantial archival research abroad. In 2021 Rory was additionally awarded a Visiting Fellowship by the British Library’s Eccles Centre which will further facilitate the archival end of his study.
Research Interests
Historical Ethnomusicology
Irish Studies
Popular Music Studies
Sociology
Political Science
Anthropology
Critical Race Studies
Irish Traditional Music
Modern Liminality Theory
Thesis
“A Darker Shade of Green: the Twisted Roots of the Irish Banjo”
This thesis explores the cultural symbiosis between Irish, African American and blackface minstrel cultures in the nineteenth century and the adoption of the banjo by Irish American blackface minstrel performers during that time. The study begins with a brief overview of Green and Black migratory patterns and cultural encounters within the context of Atlantic state formation in the New World in the colonial period. It then leads into the closing years of the War of 1812, wherein the initial performances of the first distinctively American blackface dialect song, “the Siege of Plattsburg,” more commonly known today as “Backside Albany,” took place. The study rounds up in the early 1840s, when the Virginia Minstrels firmly established the Minstrel Show as the first mass popular music culture in the Atlantic world.
As a core part of that investigation the project explores the fluidity and performativity of ethnicity, race and identity for Irish American minstrel banjoists in an increasingly racialised antebellum American society. Changing power relations between Irish and African American social groups will be a key concern here. Though these performers have been described, somewhat interchangeably, as Anglo-American, Scots-Irish, and Irish-American, the extent to which the use of such ethnic labels proves applicable will be another, as will the significance of changing perceptions and representations of “Irishness” and “blackness” within antebellum popular culture.
Moreover, in the attempt to overcome the challenge of researching an oral/aural vernacular expressive culture, and one that has largely eluded the historical record, the project will involve extensive archival fieldwork combined with the employment of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework which fuses perspectives from Historical Ethnomusicology and Irish Studies with that of Social Theory. Moreover, and in addition to Post-Colonial and Critical Race Theory, a thorough engagement with the work of scholars of the modern school of Liminality Theory has the potential to be the most significant in that regard.
Professional Development/Experience
Assistant Editor and Web Manager – Aigne, UCC’s Peer-Reviewed Postgraduate Journal (2021)
Music Performance Mentor - Northwest Regional College, Derry (2020–2021)
Guest Lecturer - World Music Studies Class, HND Level 5 Northwest Regional College, Derry (2014–2020)
Guest Lecturer - Music and Race Seminar, University College Cork, Cork (2019/2020)
Teacher - Children’s Popular Fiction, DCU’s Centre for Talented Youth, Western Gateway Building, Western Road, Cork (Spring 2018)
Reference Presentations / Posters / Publications & Abstracts / Patents
Peer-reviewed Articles
In 2020 I had my first solely authored publication, entitled “Backside Albany, Trickster’s Spirit and the Axial moment of Blackface Minstrelsy,” which was published in the International Political Anthropology Journal. Drawing extensively upon concepts derived from the works of Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner and other political anthropological theorists, the article retraced the origins of the Blackface Minstrel genre to the performance of the wartime ballad “Backside Albany;” the first dialect dong to be published in America. The article explored the notable use of an Irish air associated with anti-Catholic sentiment within that work.
Corbett, Rory. 2020. “‘Backside Albany,’ Trickster’s Spirit and the Axial Moment of Blackface Minstrelsy.” International Political Anthropology: 13(1): 29–47.
Abstract:
This paper retraces the liminal societal conditions in which the wartime ballad “Backside Albany” came to instantiate the blackface minstrel tradition in America. Through tracing the animating effects of a trickster spirit in the post-Revolutionary American song tradition, it argues for the importance of recognising the dangers inherent to persisting liminal conditions for a trickster takeover and with it an escalation of mimetic rivalry. As a result new avenues for understanding the deterioration of relations between Irish and African Americans in the antebellum American social drama are offered.
After participating in a conference jointly held by History Ireland and Drew University in 2016 I was very kindly asked by one of the panellists to contribute to an article entitled “A Uniting Force:” Irish Music on U.S. Radio” published in Taylor and Francis’ Journal of Radio & Audio Media.
Dempsey, John Mark, Rory Corbett and Marc Geagan. 2016. ‘“A Uniting Force”: Irish Music on U.S. Radio’. Journal of Radio & Audio Media 23(1): 123–143.
Abstract:
Ethnic music of all kinds has had a powerful influence on American popular music throughout history, and this is certainly true of Irish music. For nearly 100 years, radio has been a vital conduit for conveying musical influences of all kinds to listeners and musicians alike. This qualitative study analyses Irish radio broadcasting in the United States The article is based upon an open-ended survey of U.S. broadcasters of Irish music programs in the top 10 markets and provides a summary of their recent playlists.
Reference Presentations
Corbett, Rory. 2021. “The Virginia Minstrels’ 1842–44 British and Irish Tour.” SMI/ICTM-IE Postgraduate Conference.
Corbett, Rory. 2020. “The Twisted Roots of the Irish Banjo.” The Banjo Gathering.
Corbett, Rory, Ellen Scheible, Kathryn Holt, Molly Ferguson, Rachel Nozicka. 2020. “Race and Protest” Panel. Mid-West American Conference for Irish Studies.
Corbett, Rory. 2020. “Crisis and Transition: The Invention of the Banjo and the Reinvention of the Self.” Joint ICTM-IE/SMI Annual Postgraduate Conference, University of Limerick.
Corbett, Rory. 2019. “The Whitening of the Banjo and the Whitening of the Irish in Jacksonian America.” The Irish Association for American Studies Annual Conference, University College, Cork.
Corbett, Rory. 2016. ‘“This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender”: The Banjo’s Transformation as a Symbol of Oppression in the Nineteenth Century to One of Resistance in the Twentieth’. Drew University Trans-Atlantic Conference, Bundoran, Co. Donegal.
Corbett, Rory. 2015. “How Ulster Helped Shape America’s Ballad Tradition.” Drew University Trans-Atlantic Conference, Bundoran, Co. Donegal.
Corbett, Rory. 2015. “Irish American involvement in Blackface Minstrelsy.” Drew University Trans-Atlantic Conference, Bundoran, Co. Donegal.
Corbett, Rory. 2014. “When Paddy Picked Up the Banjo.” Drew University Trans-Atlantic Conference, Bundoran, Co. Donegal.
Corbett, Rory Mick Moloney, Charlie McGettigan, John Dempsey, Marc Geagan . 2014. “The Emigrant’s Song: The Impact of Irish Music on American Culture” Panel. History Ireland at Drew University Trans-Atlantic Conference, Bundoran, Co. Donegal.
Awards and Scholarships
2021
The British Library’s Eccles Centre Visiting Fellowship
2019–2022
Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship
2019
National University of Ireland Travelling Studentship
2018–2021
UCC PhD Excellence Scholarship
2017–2018
UCC Masters Excellence Scholarship
2014
The Yeats International Summer School Pierce Loughran Memorial Scholarship
Seamus O'Grady Prize by Irish Studies Department
2011–2014
NUIG scholarship on basis of final results for years 2, 3, and 4
Granted title University Scholar for exam results from year 2
Membership in Professional Associations/Affiliations
Member of The Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM)
Member of British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE)
Member of The Irish Chapter for the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM)
Member of The International Association for the Study of Popular music (IASPM)
Associate Member of The Irish Musicians Rights Organisation (IMRO)
Member of the Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland
Contact Details
Email - rory.corbett.2021@mumail.ie
Twitter - @RoryCorbett
Kayleigh Ferguson
Biography
Kayleigh is starting a PhD in Musicology under the tutelage of Professor Lorraine Byrne-Bodley. Previously, she has obtained an MSLIS qualification in Rare Book and Special Collections Librarianship from Long Island University, and an MMus in Historical Musicology from University College Dublin. Her goal is to pair her background as a music researcher with her skills in library and archive services to work as a cataloguer and curator of manuscript sources and humanities collections, in between traveling the world with her dog.
Research interests
Information History
Digital Preservation
Cataloguing and Metadata Standards
Palaeography
Music Manuscripts
Early Music
Codicology
Thesis information
Kayleigh’s thesis, aptly titled “A Case for Enhanced Access to Irish Musical Sources: The Pugin Collection in the Russell Library, Maynooth University,” is exactly that: a case study using a ‘dark’ archive of music and cultural heritage sources held at Maynooth as a plea for the importance of digital preservation in the humanities. This study will run alongside the enhancement of the collection’s metadata and preservation efforts through online access, and work to promote such methods as an integral and viable scheme for the survival of cultural heritage materials, as well as a call to improve access to underserved demographics.
Professional experience
Kayleigh has served as a cataloguer for various libraries and archives, chiefly Archbishop Marsh’s Library in Dublin and the LIU Post Archives with the Gardiner Foundation in New York. She has also taught music theory and private instruction and led tutorials in academic writing.
Publications
Out of Myself and My Country I Go: A Historical Discourse of the Troubadour in British Literature (International Medievalisms, Maynooth University, June 2019; The Society for Musicology in Ireland Plenary Conference, October 2020; forthcoming publication for Boydell and Brewer, Medievalisms).
Rare Books of Dublin: A History of the Book Through Ireland’s Written Artefacts (Commissioned for the CNY Irish Cultural Society, March 2019).
The Hibernian Catch Club Collection at Archbishop Marsh’s Library, Dublin: A Preliminary Assessment (UCD School of Music Graduate Colloquium, April 2017).
Awards & scholarships
Maynooth University’s John and Pat Hume Doctoral Scholarship
Gardiner Foundation Graduate Archival Fellowship
Memberships of professional bodies
American Library Association
American Musicological Society
Association of College and Research Libraries
Musique Medievale
Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (ACRL)
Society for Musicology in Ireland
Contact details
William Kearney
Biography
William Kearney is a Hume scholar in the Department of Music, Maynooth University, whose research explores embodiment in Irish traditional musicking contexts. In acknowledging the intersubjectivity of such processes of embodiment, this work places a dual focus on appropriateness of methodology, both in the research and output phases, and seeks to explore alternative approaches in both regards.William undertook his undergraduate studies at University College Cork, where he was awarded a first-class honours degree (BMus) in 2020 and has subsequently completed the MA Ethnomusicology course at the same institution. His MA thesis examined the pre-revival musicking contexts of the Sliabh Luachra region of southern Ireland, positing that the music’s characteristic rhythmic lift could be viewed as an expression of a shared communicative impulse, one which was equally palpable in set dancing and other forms of the temporal arts common to the region.
Research interests
Ethnomusicology
Irish traditional music and dance
Embodiment
Oral Theory
Performance Studies
Performative ethnography
Multimedia ethnography
Artistic research
Thesis title
Ó Ghlúin go Glúin: Style and Aesthetic as a Manifestation of Embodiment in Irish Traditional Music.
Thesis abstract
While much has been written on the various contexts in which transmission occurs in Irish traditional music, there is of yet to be any significant research into the ways in which this cultural knowledge is embodied. Drawing on concepts from oral theory and affect theory, this research aims to address this gap in the literature, showing how the development of individual style and aesthetic is but a natural manifestation of the emic processes of embodiment, i.e., the act of making a music ‘one’s own.’ Employing a transdisciplinary approach to research, this question will be addressed by combining traditional ethnographic methods such as interviews in the field, with practice-based research, in order to develop a truly holistic picture of the embodiment process. In a similar spirit, the dissemination of this knowledge will aim to address the potential limitations of the written word in articulating the entirety of that which is experienced in the body. Taking a multimedia approach, an open-access website - containing audio and visual media - will be developed in dialogue with the written thesis so that the research findings may be represented utilising the full potential of the textual, visual and audial.
Professional development/experience
Percussion Tutor – Music Generation, Cork City (2015-2020).
Awards & scholarships
Quercus College Scholar, Music (2nd year, 2019)
Quercus College Scholar, Music (3rd year, 2020)
John and Pat Hume Scholarship 2021-2025
Contact details
Diarmuid Lally
Biography
Diarmuid is a Jazz musician, composer and bassist. Initially trained as a sound engineer, subsequently began his studies in Jazz Composition at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. This opportunity led to many performances across the US, in a wide variety of musical styles. Upon returning to Europe, Diarmuid completed a BA (First-Class Hons) at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam studying performance. Here he wrote and led many groups that toured around the continent, and in 2017, won the international Bucharest Jazz Competition.Diarmuid was then accepted into a specialised masters program that was split between Amsterdam and Los Angeles, at the University of Southern California - Thornton School of Music, working one on one with some of todays most influential composers and musicians in which he received First Class Hons.
Diarmuid is an active performer and has performed extensively across the US and Europe. The wide scope in music of these performances led to the MA Thesis centred around expanding his improvisational capabilities, and devising several systems that liberate oneself from many of the idiosyncrasies inherent to many musical styles, and explore the underlying structures of improvisation itself.
Research interests
Improvisation
Performance practice
Popular Music Studies
Sociology
Thesis title
Performer meets Composer: Composition through the lens of the Performer
Thesis abstract
Performance impacting on composition is not a new concept; performance practices have been codified in the techniques of composers throughout history, these structures and systems have frequently been the bedrock of musical creativity. Furthermore, improvised performance was – and is – often the basis of composition. From the improvisational strategies of the 16th-18th centuries that gave rise to conventional forms such as the toccata, prelude, ricercare, and fantasia, to more contemporary practices espoused by composer-performers as diverse as Messiaen and Jennifer Walshe, improvisation has often been the source of new forms that, once codified, inform and influence the creative approach of many subsequent composers.The relationship between the string player and their instrument, and how that affects or influences their creative output is an area of much discussion and, as a bassist, one on which I reflect regularly as a composer. When a harmonically challenging musical idea is encountered, we often quickly associate it with a ‘fingering pattern’ or muscle memory. There are many concepts and techniques devised to ‘liberate’ the performer from patterns that they have become accustomed to, in order to spur their own creativity. I intend to explore how my performance practice as a totality impacts on my compositional language across a wide range of instruments (beyond my own) and in a range of musical styles with a view to generating new knowledge on compositional strategies derived from this research that will be of use to other composers, performers and composer-performers.
Professional development/experience
Music Teacher: (2008-Present)
Musician Educator: Music Generation Kildare
Editor, Content Creator and Designer: Berklee Online
Editor, Content Creator and Designer: CvA Online
Arranger: (2010 - Present)
Composer: (2010 - Present)
Awards & scholarships
Scholarship to Berklee College of Music: 2009
Travel and Training form the Arts Council of Ireland: 2019 to study at the University of Southern California
Dutch Internationaliseringsfonds Award from the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten: 2019
Holland Scholarship, from the government of the Netherlands: 2019
Grand Prize Winner of the International Bucharest Jazz Competition 2017
Contact details
Hui Han Lui
Biography
Hui Han Lui is a PhD in Music (Performance) student working under the supervision of Dr Antonio Cascelli and Dr Alison Hood.
Prior to pursuing her PhD, she has completed a Bachelor of Music (Performance) from University Putra Malaysia and MA in Performance and Musicology from Maynooth University, both with first class honours. She has an interest in performance studies and focused on researching body movements and gestures in piano performance during her MA studies. She completed a thesis titled Formalizing Body Movements and Gestures in Piano Solo Work: Estampes by Debussy during her MA studies.
As a pianist, her achievements include obtaining a Licentiate of Trinity College London (LTCL), being selected as one of the scholarship recipients of the YAMAHA Scholarship Program 2017, as well as one of the finalists at the First International Aswara Piano and Vocal Competition.
Research Interests
● Piano performance
● Body movements and gestures
● Piano techniques and playing approaches
● Audio and visual effects of a performance
Thesis
Evolution of Body Movements and Gestures in Piano Playing from Classical to 20th century.
In recent years, body movements and gestures in a performance have been increasingly studied and is often seen as a tool to convey expressions, emotions, musical structure or phrasing of the music. Nonetheless, little research has been conducted on the evolution and transformation of body movements over time. The changes in body movements of a pianist were mainly affected by techniques and postures passed from master to student, as well as in response to newly composed piano pieces and choices of instrumentation at the time. The differences in techniques and postures directly influence the body movements and gestures of a performance which could have a further effect on the sound as well.
This study aims to determine the evolution of body movements by examining piano techniques and playing approaches from the Classical period, Romantic period and 20th century. It also aims to investigate how physical approaches such as techniques, postures and pieces of each period affect the body movements of a pianist. To achieve these aims, theoretical research of the literature and treatises, performer-based methods and third person analysis using technologies such as machine learning will be adopted in this study.
Presentations
Evolution of Body Movements: Piano Techniques and Playing Approaches in Classical Period - SMI/ICTM-IE Joint Plenary Conference, Trinity College Dublin, May 2021
Awards and Scholarships
YAMAHA Scholarship Program 2017
John and Pat Hume Scholarship
Publications
Evolution of Body Movements: Piano Techniques and Playing Approaches in Classical Period - SMI/ICTM-IE Joint Plenary Conference, Trinity College Dublin, May 2021
Evolution of Body Movements: Piano Techniques and Playing Approaches in Classical Period - Doctors in Performance Conference, The Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, September 2021
Contact Details
Pàdruig Morrison
Biography
Pàdruig Morrison is a current PhD composer working under the supervision of Dr Ryan Molloy. His compositional work explores the confluence of Scottish traditional music and contemporary composition, and he has had works performed by the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble, the ConTempo Quartet, the Rednote Ensemble, the Hebrides Ensemble and members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.As a performer, his main instrument is the accordion, studying classical accordion with Djordje Gajic. In 2013 he was the first accordionist to reach the final of the Edinburgh Competition Festival concerto competition, performing Piazzolla’s Bandoneon Concerto on accordion with orchestra led by conductor David Watkin.
He graduated with a BMus from the University of Edinburgh, studying composition with Peter Nelson and Gareth Williams. He then went on to complete an MA in Composition from Maynooth University studying with Ryan Molloy and Martin O’ Leary. In that year he was the winner of the Peter Rosser Composition Competition and the Maynooth University and SINFONIA composition competition.
Pàdruig grew up with a rich inheritance from the Gaelic oral tradition, as a native Gaelic speaker and traditional musician from Uist in the Outer Hebrides. He continues to be an active professional traditional musician, performing with Beinn Lee at many festival, and was a 2020 finalist in the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year. He also established a group, Causeway Trio, which combines traditional music with contemporary, jazz, and world influences, and were 2016 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award Finalists. He has also written and recorded a number of soundtracks.
Research interests
Contemporary composition
Scottish traditional music
The confluence of trad/folk music and ‘art music’
Gaelic Psalm Singing
Piobaireachd
Presbyterianism and Gaelic musico-poetic culture
Scottish Romanticism
Thesis title
‘Finding a Voice for Gaelic Art Music: a Compositional Approach for Contemporary Scotland’
Thesis abstract
The confluence of traditional music with contemporary composition is a field of limited discussion in Scotland. Recent discoveries have unearthed the pioneering compositional work of Erik Chisholm whose innovations in combining Scottish traditional music with contemporary techniques are the most fastidious and ambitious in the field to date. Building on the research of John Purser, which traces the developments of both traditional and classical music until the end of the twentieth century, it may be seen that a bifurcation occurred in Scotland after the second world war. In reactionary to the Scottish style of Chisholm, many composers in an increasingly cosmopolitanised Scotland turned towards a style that was European focused. As this research shows, since 1980 however, a compositional trend which takes considerable influence from traditional music has emerged.Devices such as Piobaireachd, Gaelic Psalm Singing, and ornamentation have been adopted by composers but the success and depth of stylistic integration achieved to date is limited. This integration will be considered and compositionally developed with critical autoethnographic awareness of the stylistic confluence embodied by a contemporary composer who is also a professional traditional musician. The new compositional approach of the original works accompanying this thesis will be an informed development of tradition and contemporary art, bringing together the two musical disciplines in a new way, with an analytically and autoethnographically informed compositional voice.
Professional development/experience
Teaching Assistant for undergraduate course: ’Introduction to Composition’, involving giving a lecture, leading tutorials, and marking assessments.
Private instrumental tutor for 8 years.
Publications
Presentations:
‘Finding a Voice for Gaelic Art Music: Scottish Contemporary Composition and the influence of Traditional Music’ (The Motherland Resurrected: Manifestations of Nationalism in Music Since the End of the ‘Short Twentieth Century’, University of Cambridge (Zoom), 22.07.21.
Compositions/performances:
Sealladh a Tuath, for piano quintet. Premiered 25.04.19 by the ConTempo Quartet with pianist Aileen Cahill.
Overseas was written in collaboration with, and performed by, pianist and Masters of Performance student Hui Han Lui, and premiered 14.03.19.
Caoin Leth Challtach, for Flute, Bb Clarinet, Violin, Violoncello and Piano. Premiered 13.04.19 by the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble at the 2019 Peter Rosser Composition Competition, Belfast.
Làn Dhuer, for Mezzo- Soprano, Bb Clarinet, Accordion, Violin and Violoncello. Premiered 26.09.19, by the Hebrides Ensemble at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
An Tàillear anns an Eaglais Tathaichte, for baritone, clarinet, trumpet and trombone. Premiered 12.04.20 by the Loadbang Ensemble, Maynooth University.
Lament for the Bird's Dance in the Sea, for solo harp. Premiered 28.11.19 by Clíona Doris, Farmleigh Music and Arts Festival, Farmleigh House.
Fragile Distance. Premiered 10.04.20 by Tom Hunter of the Red Note Ensemble, in Digital Noisy Night no. 1.
Clò, for the ensemble and tape. Premiered 05.12.20 by the Glasgow Improviser’s Orchestra, for Ceòl is Craic’s ‘Ocaidich / Improvise!’ virtual concert.
Sileán na Carraige, for piano four hands.
Anail dhan Chluas, for accordion and saxophone.
Fead na Feadaig, for wind quintet.
Ceòl na Talmhain, for solo piano.
Òran an Ròin, for baritone and piano.
Awards & scholarships
John and Pat Hume Doctoral Scholarship
Memberships of professional bodies
Scottish Music Centre
New Music Scotland
The Ivors Academy of Music Creators
Contact details
padruig.morrison.2019@mumail.ie
www.padruigmorrison.weebly.com
Twitter @PadruigMorrison
Dylan Murphy
Dylan Murphy
Biography
Dylan Murphy is a Contemporary Classical Art Music Composer/Performer, who hails from Galway in Ireland’s West, but is currently based in Dublin, Ireland. He is currently researching 20th Century Irish Literature in relation to contemporary art music composition at Maynooth University under the supervision of Dr Martin O’Leary, and is also currently a lecturer in the Theory Department of BIMM Dublin. He has released music in a Jazz context previously, which has been said to “culminate in this delicious melange of blues styles”; but has gone on to focus on Contemporary Classical Art Music composition and performance with the release of his first piece, Iridescence - for solo piano, performed by Izumi Kimura. His influences include Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Lili Boulanger, but are not just limited to a contemporary classic tradition, he has also found influence from Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Julian Lage and Bill Frisell, among many others. His sound can be said to be derived from the fusing of this background: Jazz along with Contemporary Classical, culminating in this tonally dense soundscape.
Research interests
Contemporary Classical Music Composition Jazz Composition
Classic Literature
20th-Century Music
French Impressionist Music Serialism
Traditional Jazz
Modal Jazz
Traditional Irish Music in Contemporary Setting
Thesis title
Juxtaposed Art Forms: 20th-Century Irish Literature and Contemporary Classical Art Music – the Interaction and Impact on my Music.
Thesis abstract
Art influences art; throughout my previous studies, MA of Composition at Maynooth University, literature played a key role in its culmination; and thus, the research being conducted in this PhD is based upon the interaction of literature with Contemporary Musical Composition.The main focus within will be of new music composition in relation to key writers of 20th Century Irish Literature, that of: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and W. B. Yeats. The new music composed will be influenced by the literature in a variety of ways, but primarily the forms and techniques uncovered within the literature, that will be incorporated to the musical idiom.
There will also be this question of modernist vs. postmodern thought within the newly composed music as well as the case studies (music/literature) analysed, along with a question of Irishness within the composed music and case studies.
Professional development/experience
Lecturer – BIMM Dublin 2021 – Present
Publications
“Iridescence – For Solo Piano”, performed by Izumi Kimura. https://youtu.be/8TgLxxsaOOw
Contact details
dylanmurphy02@gmail.com
Dara O'Reilly
Dara O’Reilly
Biography
Dara O’Reilly is a musician and composer of electroacoustic music based in Dublin, currently completing a PhD in the Department of Music, Maynooth University under the supervision of Dr Gordon Delap. Prior to this he completed a BA in Music Technology and an MA in Creative Music Technology, both from Maynooth. His MA thesis, a portfolio of electroacoustic compositions, focused primarily on exploring granular synthesis and its interaction with the human voice. Other compositions of his involve exploring granular synthesis in a live setting and the manipulation of sounds on a spectral level. Outside of electroacoustic music, Dara is a guitarist with the experimental rock band Fish in the Sky and has experience working as a sound recordist for films.
Research interests
Electroacoustic composition
Live performance of Electroacoustic music
Analog and digital signal processing
Noise Music
Hauntology
Acoustics
Thesis title
The sounds of error: an investigation into the aesthetics of failure
Thesis abstract
This research project is concerned with exploring audio errors, how they arise and their implementation into works of electroacoustic music. When recording and presenting audio, we strive to adhere to the aesthetic convention that has built up over the decades since the advent of recording technology. Great care is taken to avoid errors that may arise in the process of recording and presenting audio. In the recording stage this may involve feedback from microphones or amplifiers, and in the presenting stage this could involve vinyl warping or CDs skipping. All of these issues produce sounds that are considered unwanted and, in many cases, unusable.The world we live in is dominated by technology, yet there is still a yearning for the past which can be seen in the resurgence of vinyl and other old audio technologies returning. Throughout this project I will explore both old and new audio technology and look at their errors as a way to compare and contrast them. Using modern sound manipulating and synthesis techniques such as granular synthesis and convolution I will transform the sounds of errors and repurpose them for use in electroacoustic compositions. This research project will also explore human interaction with these sounds. Through the use of interactive hardware controllers, I will explore how these mechanical, inhuman sounds can be manipulated to be given a more organic quality.
Professional development/experience
Lecturer – BIMM Dublin 2021 – Present
Compositions
Rings (2020)
Chapel (2020)
Falaise (2020)
Littoral (2021)
Typha (2022)
Contact details
dara.oreilly.2023@mumail.ie
Eilis O'Sullivan
Biography
Irish flautist Eilís O'Sullivan graduated from the Cork School of Music and, as a scholarship student, continued her studies at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She graduated with B.A. (Hons) and M.Mus with Distinction. Eilís is much in demand as a solo, chamber and orchestral musician, having broadcast and toured extensively. Throughout her career she has been distinguished with many awards including the Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians, London and first prize in the Governor's Recital Prize Competition at the Scottish Conservatoire. Eilís has performed widely as a soloist. Recitals include performances at St. Martin in the Fields, London, Sir Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham, NCH Dublin, with Crash Ensemble in Germany, for the Prince of Wales at Hollyrood Palace, Edinburgh and at the main concert hall and music club venues throughout Ireland, Britain and Germany. Guest concerto engagements include performances in Seattle, USA, Glasgow & Edinburgh, Scotland, and as a broadcast with the RTE Concert Orchestra, Dublin. As an active chamber musician some of Eilís' recent performances include Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, Beethoven's Trio for Flute, Bassoon and Piano, Wind Trios for ClassicalKids, recitals with Hifilutin flute quartet and NCH appearances with the Orpheus Trio. As an orchestral musician she has freelanced with the RSNO (Royal Scottish National Orchestra), SCO (Scottish Chamber Orchestra), BBC Wales, NSOI (National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland) and RTÉCO (Radio Telifis Éireann Concert Orchestra).
Currently Eilís is a lecturer at the MTU Cork School of Music and is a PhD student at Maynooth University working under the supervision of Prof. Fiona Palmer and Dr Antonio Cascelli.
Thesis title
A Flautist’s Exploration on ‘I-Thou’ (I U): (U I) ‘Thou-I’ [An Artistic Research into and through the performances of Olivier Messiaen’s Le Merle Noir (1952) and Luciano Berio’s Sequenza 1 (1958)]
Contact details
Conor Lawrence Power
Biography:
Conor is currently working on his PhD in Musicology under the supervision of Prof. Christopher Morris. His thesis investigates the links between the American and heroic idioms in the popular film scores of John Williams. He has completed both a BMus (First Class Honours) and Masters in Musicology at Maynooth. His undergraduate dissertation “Williams and Wagner: The Leitmotif from Valhalla to a Galaxy Far, Far Away”, and Master’s thesis “Building a Past: Music and Nostalgia in the Star Wars sequels” investigated the use of leitmotif and musical nostalgia in John Williams’s Star Wars scores. As well as musicological research Conor teaches piano both privately and at the Lucan School of Music, and has received a Gold Medal for his Advanced Recital Certificate from the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Research Interests:
- Film music studies
- John Williams
- Hans Zimmer
- Music semiotics
- Popular music
- Music and gender
- Music and sexuality
- Piano pedagogy
- Music in late nineteenth and early twentieth century
Thesis:
Conor’s research focusses on the heroic idiom in the popular film scores of John Williams. Through tracing the development of the heroic and militaristic topics in Western art music, and the development of American art music in the early twentieth century, his thesis investigates the universalisation of an American-heroic idiom in Hollywood. The sound of Williams’s music is widely-recognized as adapting and borrowing the popular codes and styles of classical Hollywood, and late European romanticism. Less acknowledged, is the extent to which Williams continues the legacy of his American forebears – namely Aaron Copland. The wide-open sonorities of Copland’s self-imposed simplicity style have been associated with images of the American prairie since his popular ballets of the 1940s, and Hollywood westerns of the 1950s; and his famous Fanfare for the Common Man is an obvious influence on many similar works in cinema. By foregrounding the influence of Copland’s style on Williams, this research demonstrates that the music of Hollywood heroes is associated with the trappings of American ideologies of heroism.
Williams has scored many of cinemas most recognised heroes (Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Superman, Harry Potter) as well as numerous American icons (Lincoln, JFK, and soldiers of World War 2 and Vietnam) both of which are narratively treated as idealised saviours. By examining these popular themes the gendered and nationalist facets of Williams’s style will be established, and shown to echo both the latent beliefs of his European and American antecedents, and Hollywood’s troubled relationship with gender and racial equality. Given Williams’s position as one of the most preeminent film composers, his influence on his successors, and the persistent presence of his themes in contemporary film culture, these biased musical idioms have proliferated to the point where they have become the accepted norm of film music. Through a look at music semantics, style topics, historical trends, and case studies of popular film scores, this issue, and its effect on the audience’s perspective, will be investigated.
Professional Experience:
Conor has led tutorials on introductions to classical music, lectured on post-classical Hollywood scoring practices, and tutors over 40 piano students.
Presentations:
Upcoming: ‘Gender Coding in Scores of John Williams’ (XIII Simposio: La Creación Musical en la Banda Sonora, University of Oviedo, June 2021).
Upcoming: ‘Gender Coding in Scores of John Williams’ (SMI/ICTM-IE Joint Plenary Conference, Trinity College Dublin, May 2021).
‘Hymn to the Fallen: Constructing American Values in Saving Private’ (British Audio-Virtual Research Network Virtual Colloquia Series, February 25th 2021).
‘Hymn to the Fallen: Constructing American Values in Saving Private’ (BFE/RMA Students’ Conference 2021, University of Cambridge, January 12th 2021).
‘Hymn to the Fallen: Constructing American Values in Saving Private Ryan’ (SMI/ICTM-IE Joint Plenary Conference, University College Dublin, October 31st 2020).
Scholarships:
Maynooth University’s Taught Masters Scholarship.
Maynooth University’s John Hume Doctoral Scholarship.
Contact Details:
Sydney Rime
Sydney Rime
Biography
Sydney Rime started a Ph.D. in Musicology at Maynooth University in 2022, under the supervision of Dr. Adrian Scahill. Previously, she studied in Paris and Versailles for both academic degrees (French literature, music history) and performance degrees (piano, pianoforte, harpsichord). After graduating, she specialised in Early Music at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague (Netherlands). Since 2010, she has been teaching piano and music theory in Conservatories and music Academies, while leading a career as a historical keyboard player and music historian. Passionate about Literature and History, she likes to blend different forms of arts in her musical performances.
Research interests
Early Music
Connections between folk music and "art music"
Pan-Celticism and music
Folk music of Brittany, Ireland, Wales and Scotland
Breton composers
Historical Keyboards
Folksongs
Nineteenth-century / early twentieth century repertoire for piano and voice inspired by folk music
Music and Literature
Rhetoric and music
Thesis title
Transnational musical exchanges - Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Breton folksong collections with piano accompaniment (1880-1910)
Thesis abstract
Sydney's research focuses on Irish, Welsh, Breton and Scottish folksong collections for piano and voice with a transnational dimension, published between 1880 and 1910. The songs in those collections are generally folk tunes collected from oral or written sources, with a ‘Romanticised’ accompaniment matching the aesthetics of "art songs" of the period. In other cases, the songs have been completely created (music and text). There have been many debates around the authenticity of such folksong collections, especially concerning the work of Moore, Bunting and Thompson in the early nineteenth century, but there is an apparent gap of knowledge when it comes to the shared legacy of those songs, and to the transnational exchanges that they generated, especially in the context of the late nineteenth-century Celtic Revival. Did these folksong collections contribute to the creation of a pan-Celtic musical identity?
Professional development/experience
Teaching Assistant for undergraduate course: ’Introduction to Composition’, involving giving a lecture, leading tutorials, and marking assessments.
Private instrumental tutor for 8 years.
Publications
Presentations:
"Bourgault-Ducoudray's folksong collections - towards a pan-Celtic musical identity" (January 2023, SMI / ICTM Conference in University College Dublin)Compositions/performances:
Memberships of professional bodies
Society for Musicology Ireland
Contact details
sydney.rime.2023@mumail.ie
Peter Shannon
Biography
2021 is Peter Shannon’s seventh year as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Jackson Symphony in Jackson, Tennessee. He was the first Artistic Director and Conductor of the Savannah Philharmonic, in Savannah Georgia, from 2008 to 2018, before deciding to relocate with his family to his native Ireland. He commutes regularly to the USA and mainland Europe to conduct. As a Bachelor of Music student at University College Dublin and a member of the RTÉ National Chamber Choir, he began studying conducting under the Irish conductor, Colman Pearce. In Germany, Shannon began postgraduate studies in Weimar at the Franz Liszt Hochschule für Musik, founded by the great pianist Franz Liszt. He earned a second postgraduate degree at the Karlsruhe Hochschule für Musik. Following in the steps of J.S. Bach who conducted the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, Shannon, at age 26, was appointed conductor of the Collegium Musicum Orchestra in Heidelberg, Germany, the county’s oldest university.Peter Shannon has always had a strong desire to connect Music and Medicine. Recognizing the holistic connection between music and healing, Peter has developed and shepherded programs in the USA at Hospitals, Cancer Institutes and Hospice settings for over ten years. He is the founder and director of the American non profit “American Institute for music and Healing” (AIMH). At the AIMH, Shannon has partnered with Dr. Jacqueline Huntly, MD, MPH, to further grow the work and abilities of the musicians in this arena of Mind/Body Medicine. Together, Shannon and Huntly created the “Awakening the Musician’s Inner Gift” and “Nurturing the Inner Spirit/Healer” workshops. Jacqueline Huntly MD, board certified in Preventive Medicine and a Fellow in Integrative Medicine, was inspired to work with Peter Shannon because of his passion for finding a way to mesh the power of music, mind/body medicine and the art of healing, which resonated deeply with her own background and practice in preventive medicine and healing.
Peter Shannon is an Irish Research Council funded scholar, and is about to begin the second year of his PhD under the supervision of Professor Lorraine Byrne Bodley at Maynooth university.
Research interests
Performance practice from Mozart to Brahms
Music in a healthcare setting
Conducting and Gesture
Thesis title
Franz Schubert: a composer’s ability to heal. (A conductor’s reading of Schubert’s Ninth symphony through the prism of Hans Georg Gadamer)
Thesis abstract
Schubert’s C major symphony (D. 944), composed while he was in remission from syphilis, represents not only a hugely positive work of ‘heavenly length’, but also a reluctance to return to his “Unfinished symphony”, written while the composer was plagued with the disease. Mind-Body medicine explores how our mind can influence our body and how healing systems can be used to fight disease, illness and pain. Could an analysis of Schubert’s C major symphony be shown to have had a healing effect on the composer, and what might such an analysis look like? Is it possible to isolate illness in Schubert's Unfinished symphony?Motivated by philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer’s radical viewpoint that everything we understand is language based, and from my own experiences as an orchestral conductor, where gesture is consolidated and reinforced with the spoken word, I will show how Schubert’s last 2 symphonies can be used to give us a better understanding of music and healing, and develop a more practical application of music in a healthcare setting.
Publications
Society for Musicology in Ireland conference paper presentations 2021.
Schubert Society UK paper presentation 2021.
Compassionate Mind Foundation (Compassion Focused Therapy) Conference 2021
Awards & scholarships
IRC PhD Doctoral Scholar
Memberships of professional bodies
Society for Musicology in Ireland