Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin

Irish composer and pianist Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin was born in Clonmel on 10 December 1950, and studied at Cork University.

In the 1980s he made a series of recordings with the Benedictine Monks of Glenstal Abbey and Irish chant singer Nóirín Ní Riain, his first wife.

With Helen Phelan, his second wife, he founded the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at Limerick University in 1994, was professor of music there, and, until 2016, was director of the Academy, building it up from nothing to about three hundred students across approximately twenty postgraduate and undergraduate degree programmes.

He recorded extensively with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and worked to relocate the group from Dublin to the Irish World Academy at Limerick University, and to put the orchestra on a more professional footing.

In the USA, he founded the Irish Music Archive at the Burns Library, Boston College, and was awarded the O'Donnell Chair of Irish Studies at Notre Dame University in Indiana.

He died on 7 November 2018, aged sixty-seven.