Arts Week with Judy Murphy

When the National Concert Hall announced this summer that it would present its Lifetime Achievement Award to Jane O’Leary in late October, musician and composer was amazed by the number of people who contacted her, congratulating her.

“I was asking Pat (her husband), ‘do they really mean it?’,” she says with a laugh.

It’s not that Jane doesn’t think people were genuine. It’s more that she was taken aback by the level of support she’s got for this honour, which recognises her contribution to Ireland’s musical life.

She deserves it all.

US-born Jane moved to Ireland with Waterford-born Pat in 1972, settling in Galway where he lectured in the university. Back then, classical concerts were rare here, never mind women composers.

In the 53 years since, Jane has been central to changing that.

It’s Friday afternoon and she’s just come from giving an online talk, organised by Ireland’s Contemporary Music Centre. It was attended by composers and musicians from across the world, including Irish women who have previously told Jane that, until they encountered her work, they knew of no female Irish composers.

As someone who describes music as “my everything”, Jane was a bit taken aback when she arrived in Galway in 1972 to discover it didn’t play a major part in people’s lives.

It had been central to her world since she was four.  Her older sister – who wasn’t especially musical – was studying piano back then and Jane, who was intrigued, begged their mother for lessons. She credits her artist mother with encouraging her and also praises her first piano teacher, who “was so passionate and good. There were no exams; it was all about making music and sharing it”.

Jane studied arts at Vassar College, later graduating with a PhD in composition from Princeton.

And she met Pat along the way – he’d been a Fulbright scholar.

They settled in Ireland, which back then, was very different to the liberal east coast of America where she had grown up.

These days, Jane is sad about the US, as she thinks of the educational opportunities that existed in her youth and how it was a time of de-segregation.

Having made Ireland her home, she set about creating a musical community. She offered classes in Galway and launched a campaign to procure a Steinway piano for the community.

“People thought I was crazy,” she says, laughing.

Not everybody. Jane met like-minded people, such the late Erika Casey, and Music for Galway was set up in 1981.

Today, Music for Galway is one of the West’s key arts organisations – Jane served as its Artistic Director until 2013, when she passed the baton to Finghin Colins.

As a performer and composer, the young Jane was stunned at the dearth of composers in Ireland.

“There was Seóirse Bodley at UCD, Brian Boydell at Trinity and Brian Victory at RTÉ. That was it. The Contemporary Music Centre is a fantastic resource now, but it wouldn’t be there except for me.”

Pictured: Jane O’Leary, pictured at the Ardilaun Hotel last week.