"Quality arts education is about empowering: empowered making and empowered experiencing."
Creating Space Artist-in-Residence Colm Ó Foghlú will collaborate with Baboró International Arts Festival for Children and Merlin Woods Primary School for two years. Colm will deliver regular creative workshops to two classes from the time they start 1st class until they finish 2nd class.
"Creating Space offers an unprecedented opportunity over two years to explore dynamic processes that promotes infinite possibilities, where unbridled creativity and the teaching of formal technique will be in continuous and symbiotic dialogue with each student's imagination, understandings, ideas and environment.
Quality arts education is about empowering: empowered making and empowered experiencing. With Baboró, the students and staff of Merlin Woods Primary School and I get to experience and participate in world-class art and respond in our own voice and in our own authentic way.
Creating Space offers a multidisciplinary artist and educator such as myself a unique and exciting opportunity to learn, share and create," Colm said.
Career & Education
Colm's compositions have been performed by many of Ireland’s most well-known musicians and ensembles both nationally and internationally. He has released several recordings of his own compositions and much of his original pieces relate to historical moments or locations.
His music has been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Berne Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, City of Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra, The Orchestra of Ireland, Musici Ireland and his work has been premiered and commissioned by choirs such as New Dublin Voices, Mornington Singers, Laetare, Cantando and Cuore Chamber Choirs. His work is also scheduled for performance by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in April 2023 in Dublin and Wexford.
As musical director, Colm Ó Foghlú has toured extensively throughout Australia, Europe, Asia and North America. A former Musical Director for Riverdance, he has composed, arranged and produced numerous award-winning shows and albums.
He holds an M.A. in Drama and Performance Studies from UCD and graduated from DCU, St. Patrick’s College with a Professional Masters in Education, where he was Artist-in-Residence 2018-2020.
He is currently artist-in-residence in Marino Institute of Education and has composed two separate music commissions for the Institute as part of his residency.
Colm's most recent studio recording of original music Returning/Filleadh (2022) features some of Ireland’s most renowned musicians, including Lynda Lee (soprano), John Molloy (bass), Gavan Ring (tenor), Noreen O’Donoghue (harp), Conor Linehan (piano), Aoife Ní Bhriain (violin), Niamh Ní Charra (concertina), with The Orchestra of Ireland and Musici Ireland and conductors Liam Bates and David Brophy. The album features both chamber and orchestral works and was selected as Lyric FM’s Album of the Week.
In January, his music for harp, quintet and choir, specially commissioned by the Dublin Council of Churches was broadcast on RTÉ’s Service on Sunday and his new work for solo harp (Planxty Lord Charlemont) was featured on RTÉ Radio One’s Céilí House.
His Island Lullaby, a suite in 6 movements to commemorate the 70th anniversary of The Blasket Evacuation received an Arts Council Traditional Project Award and premiered in Dun Chaoin, Co Kerry. He is currently working on a film version.
In 2016, premieres of his family operas Eoghainín na nÉan and Íosagan, based on stories by P.H. Pearse, took place at Axis Arts Centre, Dublin.
Other commissions include Irish Thunder & Celtic Fyre (Busch Gardens, USA), Aifreann na nAingeal/Mass of the Angels (RTÉ), The Star of Bethlehem: A Christmas Oratorio (BAI/RTÉ) and Inscribed (Poetry Ireland), a musical collaboration with the late poet Eavan Boland. “I believe Colm Ó Foghlú is one of the most talented and innovative musicians and composers working in Ireland, both eloquent and erudite about the craft of music” – Eavan Boland.
Colm also created the original arrangements and orchestrations for the critically acclaimed Angela's Ashes: The Musical (on tour in Ireland and UK).
He was music producer on an eight-part TV series Pitch Perfect for TG4 and regularly contributes scripts and composes music for RTÉ’s new series Tír na nÓg. He is a jury member in the new choral series for TG4 Curfá which is scheduled for broadcast later in 2023.
