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Gearóid sharing a tune with Molly Carthy, age 102, in Lisroe, |
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About Dr. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, Ph.D. MBA Understanding Irish Cultural Heritage Through Music, History and Language Media Consultant • Author • Anthropologist • Ethnomusicologist • Lecturer • Researcher • Academic Advisor • Irish Traditional Musician • Teacher & Adjudicator A recognized authority on the cultural impact of the Great Irish Famine (1845-1850) and its resulting diaspora, Ó hAllmhuráin is frequently consulted on a breath of historical and modern Irish issues. He has contributed to ABC News, PBS, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), National Geographic, San Francisco Chronicle, St Louis Post-Dispatch, RTE, Raidió na Gaeltachta (Ireland’s Gaelic-language radio network) and NPR. He has published in the international press, most notably, the Irish Times, Le Monde de Musique, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, and in the mid 1990s, was the Irish language columnist for the San Francisco Gael. Among his many projects, Ó hAllmhuráin consulted on the celebrated 1998 PBS series The Irish in America: Long Journey Home, which attracted huge television audiences in the United States and Europe. He was a research consultant to the 1996 book and subsequent ethnographic documentary, Photos to Send: Dorothea Lange’s Ireland, (San Francisco: Dierdre Lynch, Director, 2000) which won first prize at the Galway International Film Festival (2001) and continues to showcase in film festivals worldwide. Additional documentary films consultations include “Desmond Egan: Through the Eyes of A Poet” (Kansas: Washburn University, 1998) and “For the Love of the Tune: Irish Women and Traditional Music” (Portland: Spellman Productions, 2002). In 1974, a teenaged Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin published his first piece, an eyewitness account of the funeral of Joe Cooley, Galway accordion legend. This Clare Champion newspaper article continues to resurface over the years as interest in Cooley and his musical legacy survives. Since that early start, Ó hAllmhuráin’s publications have included academic monographs, scholarly articles and commercial recordings of Irish traditional music. A consultant for several documentaries, it was through his A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music (O'Brien Press, Dublin 1998) that Gearóid brought Irish traditional music to life in the context of extraordinary cultural, economic and political history. Immediately praised as a invaluable resource revealing the true history of traditional Irish music over several hundred years, A Pocket History has been used by students at the University of Notre Dame, Brown University, University of Missouri, University of Portland, Loyola University, University of Limerick, the National University of Ireland-Galway, the National University of Ireland-Cork, CUNY, Boston College, Fordham University, and De Pauw University. The comprehensive Cork Companion to Irish Traditional Music (Cork University Press) features numerous Ó hAllmhuráin contributions. His chapter entitled Traditional Music in Early Modern Ireland 1500-1800, is featured in the Encyclopedia of Ireland: Volume One, Nations of the World (Macmillan Reference USA, forthcoming). Anthropologist, Ethnomusicologist and Lecturer Anthropologist, ethnomusicologist and historian, Dr Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, MBA, Ph.D., is the Jefferson Smurfit Corporation Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of Music at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. In 2000, along with Wexford poet Eamonn Wall, he created a new academic program of Irish Cultural Studies linking the university with the Irish-American community in St. Louis and creating academic partnerships with the National University of Ireland in Galway. As part of the UM-St. Louis’ Centre for International Studies, each semester features a distinct academic offering and is complemented by a monthly public series presenting performances of music, folklore, and poetry. Past guests have included: fiddler/guitar duo Martin Hayes & Denis Cahill; flute players Mícheál Ó hAlmhain, John Skelton, and Seán Conway; singer/songwriters Robbie O’Connell, Ed Miller, and the Gaelic choral ensemble Navan, Cape Breton pianist Barbara McDonald Magone, fiddlers Patrick Ourceau, Dale Russ, Andrew O’Brien, Brian Conway and Peter Sorensen; Bernie and Barbara McDonald, percussionist Myron Bretholz, contemporary guitarist Larry Kirwin, as well as Irish poets Louis de Paor, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Mary O’Malley, Mary O’Donoghue, James Liddy, Daniel Tobin, Desmond Egan and others. |
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A noted authority on Irish traditional music and its cultural history in Ireland and throughout the Irish diaspora, Professor Ó hAllmhuráin is respected for his extensive field research in Irish music communities throughout Western Europe and North America. Fluent in Irish, French, and English, Ó hAllmhuráin’s research is distinguished by his extensive use of original and cross-disciplinary historiographical and ethnomusicological source materials unavailable to most researchers. With undergraduate and master degrees from University College Cork and Trinity College Dublin, Ó hAllmhuráin received his doctorate in Social Anthropology and Ethnomusicology from the Queen’s University of Belfast, where he worked with the renowned European ethnomusicologist, Professor John Blacking. Since 1978, Professor Ó hAllmhuráin has held academic positions at University College Cork (Ireland), Marymount International School (Paris), St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia (Canada), the International University of America and University of San Francisco (USA). Fluent in modern French, he earned a Certificat de Langue et de Civilisation Française (Niveau Supérieur) at Université de la Sorbonne in Paris, and a Diplôme de Langue et de Civilisation Française from the Université de Toulon et du Var in the south of France. A Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis where he teaches Irish music history and ethnomusicology, he also advises undergraduate and graduate students researching Celtic music and folklife at the National University of Ireland, Galway; Brown University; the University of Portland; Emerson College; Boston College, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An educator and producer with Celtic Crossings since 1995, he has presented lectures and interactive seminars on Irish music, history and folklife in libraries, elementary schools, high schools, universities and community forums throughout the United States. |
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Irish Traditional Musician, Teacher and Adjudicator In 2001, Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin was profiled in the Rough Guide to Irish Music (London: Penguin Press). A fourth generation musician and a native of Co. Clare on the west coast of Ireland, Ó hAllmhuráin holds five World Championship Irish music titles: as a concertina player, uilleann piper, and as a member of the renowned Kilfenora Céilí Band, the oldest traditional dance band in Ireland. Over the years, he has adjudicated numerous Irish traditional music competitions, including the prestigious Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann (World Championship Irish music competition) and various Irish music competitions throughout North America. Popular for his workshops and multi-media lectures, he has been on the faculty of many traditional music schools since 1994, including the Catskills Irish Arts School, (NY); the Swanannoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College, (NC); the Milwaukee Irish Summer School at the University of Wisconsin, and Goderich Celtic College, Ontario, Canada. He has also performed in festivals and concert halls throughout North America and Europe. His first solo album, Traditional Music From Clare and Beyond, (Celtic Crossings, 1996) featured Clare fiddle masters Paddy Canny, Martin Hayes, and Peadar O’Loughlin, was hailed as ‘among the best concertina recordings OF ALL TIME’ by Irish music critics. His subsequent duet album Tracin’ Traditional Music From the West of Ireland, (Celtic Crossings, 1999), recorded with French fiddler, Patrick Ourceau, exemplified the seminal duet style of Peadar O’Loughlin and Paddy Murphy in the 1950s. Critics praised its ‘brilliant instrumental performance and inspiring liner notes’. |
Irish Concertina Class, |
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