7 July 2024 at 20:00

David O'Shea, organ

Daire Halpin, soprano

David O’Shea enjoys a busy musical career as a keyboard-player, conductor, teacher and researcher. He was educated at the DIT Conservatory of Music (BMus), University of Cambridge (MMus), and Trinity College, Dublin (PhD). He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists.s

Since 2011, David has been organist of the grouped parishes of Sandford Parish Church, Ranelagh, and St Philip’s, Milltown, where he coordinates a busy musical programme. He also plays regularly at Whitefriar Street Church and the Franciscan Church, Merchant’s Quay (‘Adam and Eve’s’). He has given organ recitals in many venues around Ireland, and has also performed in the UK, mainland Europe and the USA.

David is involved in a number of educational initiatives. As well as teaching the organ privately and on the Archbishop’s Certificate in Church Music, he is Education & Outreach Officer with Pipeworks. He is a part-time Assistant Lecturer in Academic Studies at the TU Dublin Conservatoire, and has written and lectured extensively on the topic of organ and choral music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His book The Choral Foundation of the Chapel Royal, Dublin Castle, 1814–1922 is published by the Boydell Press.

Daire Halpin is an Irish soprano of considerable reputation. As a soloist, Daire has sung with many major UK and Irish opera companies as well as further afield, including Irish National Opera, Northern Ireland Opera, Scottish Opera, English National Opera, Candlelight Opera, Pavilion Opera, and Theater Magdeburg.

Daire also appears regularly as a soloist with the RTÉ Concert and RTÉ Symphony orchestras and has recorded for RTÉ Lyric
FM and the BBC. Daire represented Ireland in Japan on a concert tour with the New Crawford Piano Trio to celebrate 50 years of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Japan, and has given recitals in Áras an Uachtarán and the Irish Embassy in London.

Daire has delivered world premieres of many works including Byzantium by Nico Muhly, commissioned by the National Concert Hall (Ireland) in celebration of Yeats 2015. Daire starred in the operatic short film Through and Through by Peter Fahy (INO 20 Shots of Opera 2020) and sang the role of Daol in Finola Merrivale’s As an nGnách/ Out of the Ordinary (INO 2022), a virtual-reality opera created with disparate communities throughout Ireland. She has also created roles in operas by Craig Armstrong, Raymond Deane, and Roger Doyle.

Daire enjoys a fruitful creative partnership with Micheal Gallen and recently revived the role of Celine in Michael Gallen’s critically acclaimed opera Elsewhere which premiered in The Abbey Theatre in 2021 and toured Ireland in 2024. She is currently working on Michael’s latest opera The Curing Line which will premiere in 2025.