Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin | en

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin (Clonmel, Co Tipperary, Ireland, December, 1950 - 7 November 2018) was an Irish musician, composer, academic and educationalist.

As a pianist, composer, recording artist and academic, he held the Professorship of Music at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance which he founded at the University of Limerick in 1994.

His sons Owen O Súílleabháin and Mícheál 'Moley' O Súílleabháin are well known as singer songwriters and motivational speakers. His first wife is Irish chant singer Nóirín Ní Riain, with whom he collaborated in the 1980s on a series of recordings with the Benedictine Monks of Glenstal Abbey.

He was awarded an honorary D.Mus from the National University of Ireland at his alma mater University College Cork in 2004. In 2017 he was awarded an honorary DMus from the Royal Scottish Conservatoire. In 2016 he was awarded the Freedom of the Town in his native Clonmel in Co Tipperary. He has recorded extensively with the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

In 1990 he founded the Irish Music Archive at the Burns Library, Boston College.In 2016 he was awarded the O'Donnell Chair of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame,Indiana. In 2017 he commenced a series of concerts with the RTE Symphony Orchestra (Ireland) at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, recorded and broadcast by RTE lyric fm (Elver Gleams 2017; Between Worlds 2018).

He was inaugural Chair of 'Culture Ireland' for nine years, the organisation within the Irish Government for the promotion of all Irish arts worldwide. In 2016 he retired from the University of Limerick and was succeeded following international competition by Professor Mel Mercier, Chair of Performing Arts, a long-time musical collaborator.

Working closely with Professor Helen Phelan, his second wife, he established the Irish World Academy in 22 years (1994 - 2016) from a zero base to some 300 students across c.20 highly innovative postgraduate and undergraduate degree programmes. Graduates from the Academy have come from in excess of 50 countries across programmes offered in Music Therapy, Contemporary Dance Performance, Irish Traditional Dance Performance, Community Music, Festive Arts, Irish Traditional Music Performance, Classical String Performance, Ethnomusicology, Ethnochoreology, Ritual Chant and Song, and others - several the first of their kind in the world.

In 1995 he was central to the relocation and professionalisation of the Irish Chamber Orchestra from their Dublin Base to the Irish World Academy on the University of Limerick campus.In 2014 he established the aerial dance company Fidget Feet as Artists in Residence at the Academy which led to them recreating permanently to Limerick City.In 2008 a specially designed building costing 21 million euro and comprising 3000 square meters was opened on the University of Limerick Campus to house the Irish World Academy. The spectacular building sits on the banks of the river Shannon (itself a major influence in the philosophy of the Academy) in a wooded area on the university campus. The innovative nature of O Súilleabháin's educational and artistic vision attracted the international philanthropic organisation The Atlantic Philanthropies (TAP) along with the personal interest of Chuck Feeney, TAP's originator.

Discography

Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, 1976 (1990), Gael-Linn.
Oró Damhnaigh, 1976, Gael Linn cCy of the Mountain, 1982 (2012) Gael Linn
The Dolphin’s Way, 1987, Virgin Records Ltd.
Oilean/Island (1989)
Enlightenment with Van Morrison (1990)
Casadh/Turning (1991)

Mícheál at the honorary conferring of Seamus Heaney at the University of Limerick, 1996

Gaiseadh/Flowing (1992)
Between Worlds (1995)
Lumen (1995)
Becoming (1998)
Templum (2001)
Irish Destiny (DVD 2004) Elver Gleams (2010)


Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin is one of Ireland's best know musicians. He has over ten CD recordings on release of his own compositions and arrangements performed by Irish Chamber Orchestra under his direction.

As a performer he has given concerts across the world including the National Concert Hall (Dublin), Barbican Centre (London), Chicago Symphony Hall, Skirball Centre (New York), and TATA Theatre (Bombay).
As a pianist he is widely acknowledged as having originated a unique Irish piano style out of an Irish traditional music base.

As an academic he brought Fleischmann's Sources of Irish Music to press as Assistant Editor having worked with him on this - the largest research work on Irish Music ever published - for over twenty five years. His own Ph.D dissertation was on Innovation and Traditional in the Music of Tommie Potts, the Dublin fiddler.

He studied with composers Aloys Fleischmann (1910 - 1992) and Sean O Riada (1930 - 1971) in University College Cork, and with ethnomusicologists John Blacking and John Baily at Queens University Belfast.

As an educator, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin has been the single most important catalyst in the integration of Irish traditional music and Irish traditional dance into the Irish Higher Education system - firstly through his work at the Music Department of University College Cork where he succeeded Sean O Riada - and later in his work at the University of Limerick (UL) where he was appointed to the first Chair of Music in 1993. Most of the Higher Education posts in Irish Music Studies in Ireland are currently held by his graduates or students.

In 1994, Ó Súilleabháin founded the Irish World Music Centre at UL which has rapidly become the most active research centre in Irish traditional music and dance in the world as well as establishing a suite of nine MA taught programmes across a wide range of disciplines (including contemporary dance performance, chant performance and ritual song, music therapy, community music, and classical string performance).

He has most recently (November 2004) announced a new 14 million euro Irish World Performing Arts Village on the banks of the Shannon river on the University of Limerick campus. This will be the new home for the Irish World Music Centre under its new name, the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance.

As a public speaker he has, most recently, given keynote addresses to international conferences across the world (including China, Norway, Kenya, Scotland, Boston, and Ireland).

As a broadcaster, he has contributed to many television and radio programmes in Ireland, UK, and North America - especially in his devising, scripting and presenting of A River of Sound: The Changing Course of Irish Traditional Music (BBC, RTE, Hummingbird) in 1995 which sparked off a national debate in Ireland on issues surrounding tradition and innovation.

M Ó Súilleabháin, while rightly perceived as a crossover artist between Irish traditional, classical, jazz, popular, and various world ethnic styles, has also a career of establishing audio-visual archives of Irish traditional music and dance in University College Cork, University of Limerick, and Boston College. He was Chair of the Irish Traditional Music Archive (Dublin) for two successive three-year periods.

Ó Súilleabháin serves on the Board of Directors of the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Irish Traditional Music Archive (Dublin), Daghdha Dance Company, and University Concert Hall (Limerick), and is the Founder/Chair (in 1993) of Maoin Cheoil an Chlair in Ennis, Co Clare - the only school of music in Ireland with a constitutional remit towards the teaching of both classical and Irish traditional music.

As a record producer (apart from the production of all of his own albums), he devised and produced a series of six CD recordings (Green Linnet, Nimbus, and Real World labels) on traditional music from Ireland, Irish America, Shetland Islands, England, Canada (including Cape Breton Island) between 1990 and 1995 all of which benefit - through the donation of musician's royalties - a variety of traditional music archives in USA, UK, and Ireland.

He has also produced and musically directed an acclaimed trilogy of recordings of the singer Noirin Ni Riain and the Benedictine Monks of Glenstal Abbey: Caoineadh na Maighdine [The Virgin's Lament] (Dublin: Gael Linn 1980); Good People All (Glenstal Abbey Records 1982); and Vox de Nube [ Voice from the Cloud] (Dublin: Gael Linn 1989).

In 2005 he was appointed first Chair of Culture Ireland, a new body set up by the Irish Government to promote Irish arts internationally. Operating currently on an annual budget of 4,500,000 Euro, Culture has produced its Strategy 2006-2010 document which may be viewed on www.cultureireland.ie .