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Michael Holohan (born 27 March 1956) is an Irish composer. [1]
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Michael Holohan (born 27 March 1956) is an Irish composer. [1]
Michael Holohan was born in Drumcondra, Dublin. He was educated at O'Connell's Schools, University College Dublin (BA, 1978) and Queen's University in Belfast. He studied composition with Jane O'Leary, Eric Sweeney and Seóirse Bodley. He also attended masterclasses by Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, and Helmut Lachenmann in France.
Holohan was chairman of the Association of Irish Composers (AIC), 1987–9, and was later appointed chairman of the Droichead Arts Centre in Drogheda, where he lives since the mid-1980s. [2]
Holohan was elected to Aosdána, an Irish association of artists, in 1999. He is also a member and former Chair of the Toscaireacht of Aosdána.
Holohan has composed for solo instrument, ensemble, orchestra, stage, choir and voice. He has also collaborated with a number of poets including Nobel prize-winners Seamus Heaney and Tomas Tranströmer, Ivan Lalic and Paul Durcan.
He has lived in Drogheda since 1983. His compositions have been performed and broadcast both at home and internationally. Career highlights in Drogheda include the performances of Cromwell at the "Drogheda 800" celebrations (RTECO, Lourdes Church, 1994); The Mass of Fire, Augustinian 700 anniversary (RTÉ TV live broadcast, 1995); No Sanctuary with Nobel Laureate and poet Seamus Heaney (Augustinian Church, 1997); Remembrance Sunday Service, at Drogheda Unification 600 (RTE TV live broadcast, St Peter's Church of Ireland) and two major concerts with The Boyne Valley Chamber Orchestra at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2018 and 2019.
Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume. Heaney was and is still recognised as one of the principal contributors to poetry in Ireland during his lifetime. American poet Robert Lowell described him as "the most important Irish poet since Yeats", and many others, including the academic John Sutherland, have said that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller." Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world".
Drogheda is an industrial and port town in County Louth on the east coast of Ireland, 56 km (35 mi) north of Dublin. It is located on the Dublin–Belfast corridor on the east coast of Ireland, mostly in County Louth but with the south fringes of the town in County Meath, 49 km (30 mi) north of Dublin. Drogheda has a population of approximately 41,000 inhabitants (2016), making it the eleventh largest settlement by population in all of Ireland, and the largest town in the Republic of Ireland by both population and area. It is the last bridging point on the River Boyne before it enters the Irish Sea. The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Newgrange is located 8 km (5.0 mi) west of the town.
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Aosdána is an Irish association or academy of artists, each of whom must have produced a distinguished body of work of genuine originality. It was created in 1981 by the country's Arts Council on the initiative of a group of writers with support from the Taoiseach. Membership, which is by invitation from current members, is limited to 250 individuals; before 2005 it was limited to 200. Its steering body is a committee of 10, called the Toscaireacht.
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