Sinead Hayes trained as an engineer before realising she really wanted to be a conductor and changed career. The Corofin woman who now lives in Belfast will be home this weekend for a special Christmas show in Tuam.  Sinead tells JUDY MURPHY about finding her calling and the power of music to bring people together.

“I like to keep busy,” says Sinead Hayes, who is clearly a mistress of the understatement.

The former engineer who found her true calling as a professional orchestral conductor, will be in Tuam’s Mall Theatre this Sunday, leading Strings at Christmas, a musical adventure through Christmas films. This concert from Galway’s Ivernia String Quartet will include film music from James Bond, Home Alone, Frozen and The Snowman.

Sinead, who is also playing first violin, says this will be a unique show, with Tommy Baker of Your Man’s Puppets adding a new dimension to The Snowman story with his magical creations.

The Mall can hold 200 people and among them will be her niece Aoibheann, nearly four, so there’s no surprise that Sinead is excited to be coming home for it.

Last week she conducted the Ulster Orchestra performing a far bigger version of this concert at Belfast’s 2,000-seater Waterfront Hall. There were two performances and both sold out.

Tuam will be a different and equally enjoyable experience for a woman whose musical journey began in Corofin, in a house where traditional music was cherished. She started on tin whistle and then moved on to violin and piano, with violin becoming her instrument. Sinead’s late parents, Michael and Mary, supported their talented daughter every step of the way, including when, as a teen, she won a scholarship to study at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. From the ages of 14 to 16, she’d take the train to Dublin every Saturday morning, usually accompanied by Mary.

After her Leaving Cert, Sinead opted – for financial reasons – to study engineering at what’s now the University of Galway and shone at that too. She won a scholarship to do a Master’s in the subject at Imperial College in London in the early 2000s. And while doing that, she also earned a first-class honours Music degree from London’s City University.

In London, she attended concerts from some of the world’s leading orchestras and also played violin in quality orchestras. This period was a gamechanger for Sinead who believes students need access to top-class performances so they can fully appreciate the scope of classical music. In her own case, having seen the dynamic that was possible between conductor and musicians, she changed careers.

Realising that she wanted to conduct, she did a Master’s in Conducting at Manchester’s Royal Northern College, then moved to Berlin to study further.

Although now based in Belfast, she remains deeply connected to her rural Galway roots and would love to see people throughout Ireland have access to classical music in the way residents of other European countries have. Music is powerful in its own right, she says, with performances being a way of bringing people together and offering mental health benefits.

Having moved home to Galway in 2018 to spend time with her father, Michael, who died in 2019, Sinead ended up living largely on her own during the pandemic. This was a strange experience and she didn’t like it. But it made her aware that there “are a lot of people in their 30s and 40s living in quiet isolation in Ireland”, and she believes music can help address that.

“I am always thinking about how do I reach more people in their 30s and 40s.”

Pictured: Sinead has been awarded a bursary that will allow her to forge new connections at home and abroad, and she’s planning a blog in which she will write about what’s involved in conducting.