Showing 339 results

Levey, R.M. (1811–99). Violin, collector. Born R.M. O’Shaughnessy, he changed to his mother’s name for stage reasons. He studied music with James Barton prior to entering the Theatre Royal Orchestra at age fifteen, and later became its director. He toured Ireland with Balfe’s opera company in 1839, and was professor of violin at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, of which he was one of the founders. Two of his sons went on to be noted violinists, one of them becoming conductor at Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters in London. Levey composed fifty overtures and arranged music for 44 pantomimes in his time, but in traditional music is remembered for his collection of Irish dance music noted in Dublin and London from Irish players and published in London in 1858 and 1873 as volumes 1 and 2 of The Dance Music of Ireland. Regarded by O’Neill as the first printing of Irish dance music as such, the material was republished in 2003 as The Levey Collection. [CITM]

Mac Con Iomaire, Liam. (1937-2019). Sean-nós singer. Born Casla, in the Connemara Gaeltacht, he lives and works in Dublin. He has been a primary teacher, journalist, lecturer and broadcaster, is author of Ireland of the Proverb and Conamara: An Tír Aineoil. He has translated Tim Robinson’s Mapping South Connemara into Irish (Conamara Th eas – Áit agus Ainm) and has translated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Irish poems into English in Taisce Duan. Most impressive among his achievements is the publication in 2007 of the biography of sean-nós singer Joe Heaney: Seosamh Ó hEanaí – Nar Fhaga mé bás choíche