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. ...show more

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. ...show less