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Prof. Shane Kilcommins hosted the reception, on behalf of the Office of the President, for Lumen: The Music of Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin on Saturday, 3 September 2022. Lumen was conceived by Mícheál as the third in a series of concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra, the first two of which were Elver Gleams (2017) and Between Worlds (2018).
The theme of Lumen was linked, for Mícheál, with the dance between dark and light experienced at the solstices and equinoxes: those times of the year when balance holds, and tips, and holds again. The Lumen Concert at UCH was one of the events to mark the UL50 anniversary year and was a very memorable evening.
Prof. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin was one of Ireland's best-known musicians, composers and academics. Born in Clonmel, County Tipperary, he was Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Limerick and founder/Director at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance which he created in 1994. He also recorded a series of pioneering solo albums which re-positioned his chosen instrument, the piano, at the heart of Irish traditional music – while also revealing the intersections where classical and traditional music could co-exist.
Ó Súilleabháin left a rich legacy through his own music, as well as the Academy he founded, which has attracted students from over 50 countries who have enrolled on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Music Therapy, Contemporary Dance Performance, Irish Traditional Dance Performance, Community Music, Festive Arts, Irish Traditional Music Performance, Classical String Performance, Ethnomusicology and others.
He was hugely instrumental in the relocation of the Irish Chamber Orchestra from Dublin to its current home at the University of Limerick.
Awards included Honorary Doctorates of Music from University College Cork, (2005) and The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2017), Ollamh na hÉigse (Inaugural award by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann in 2006); Honorary Alumnus Award (Boston College) and the O’Donnell Chair of Irish Studies from the University of Notre Dame (2012). He studied at University College Cork (B.Mus.1972, MA 1973) with the composers Aloys Fleischmann and Seán Ó Riada, and in Queens University Belfast (PhD 1987) with the ethnomusicologists John Blacking and John Baily.
He produced a series of CD recordings in America, the UK, and Ireland on the traditional music of the Shetland Islands, Donegal, Cape Breton Island and on Irish traditional musicians in the USA and in England.