Tipperary women are at the heart of the Finding A Voice celebration of music

Finding A Voice was cofounded in 2017 by Clonmel sisters Roisin and Cliona Maher. Róisín is the Artistic Director of the festival that celebrates music by women composers across genres and eras and that takes place every year around International Women’s Day in her hometown. 

Róisín studied music and French at UCC, and Opera Analysis and Criticism at the University of Leeds. After graduating, she spent two and a half years in Sierra Leone, West Africa, lecturing at a teacher-training college. She currently is a lecturer on MTU Cork School of Music BMus degree course, where she teaches music history, as well as courses on Women in Music, Opera Studies, and music from 1890 to the present. 

In a parallel career in arts administration for over 30 years, Róisín has worked in a variety of posts with organisations including Universal Edition Music Publishers (London), Opera North (Leeds), Opera Theatre Company, the Contemporary Music Centre, Crash Ensemble, East Cork Early Music Festival and the Irish Association of Youth Orchestras, as well as organising a five-day Gerald Barry music festival in Dublin for RTÉ Lyric fm.

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Co-founder of the festival is her sister, Cliona Maher. Cliona is a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting, with an MA in Modern Drama Studies (1st Class Hons) from UCD. Over her career, she has worked as a creative producer, an arts manager, and a theatre practitioner in Ireland, the US and France.

On returning to Ireland from Lyon with her family in 2017, she took up the position of Artistic Director of South Tipperary Arts Centre, where Finding A Voice began life as a concert series, before moving to the role of Artistic Director of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival 2019 - 2024.

She programmed six editions of the multi-disciplinary arts festival for Clonmel Junction Arts Festival, as well as programming Designfest for TUS Clonmel Digital Campus, and co-programming In The Open – Faoin Speir with Tipperary Arts Office and South Tipp Arts Centre. She is a co-founder and former board member of When Next We Meet, the independent music festival taking place in Clonmel since 2022.

She was the creative producer for Junction’s 2023 production of From Out The Land, in Kickham Barracks for the Decade of Centenaries. With filmmaker Trish McAdam, she co-produced the award-winning film Songs of Blood and Destiny, based on the epic poem, iGirl, written by Marina Carr, which premiered in the 2023 Galway Film Fleadh and was most recently screened at the Irish Film Institute in December 2024.

She is delighted to return to produce the 2025 edition of Finding A Voice Music Festival, a project very close to her heart, and is looking forward to hearing the music of women composers from the Middle Ages to works written in 2025.

Composer Marian Ingoldsby was born in Carrick-on-Suir into a very musical family. She studied composition with Gerald Barry at University College Cork, graduating with an MA in Composition and later winning the Fleischmann Prize for her contribution to music. Marian was awarded the inaugural Elizabeth Maconchy Fellowship to study composition at the University of York, graduating with a PhD in Composition.

Marian’s extensive output includes opera, orchestral, instrumental and in particular chamber and choral music. Notable commissions include an opera for Opera Theatre Company, premiered in Dublin and performed at Covent Garden, as well as works for RTÉ Lyric FM, Cór na nÓg, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Cork International Choral Festival, the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition, and Ulster Orchestra.

Marian is currently a lecturer in the Department of Creative and Performing Arts in South East Technical University in Waterford, and is active as both performer and composer. Her work has been performed throughout the 8 years of Finding A Voice, and Marian was one of the composers presented in Leipzig in 2024 at the Schumann Haus as part of Finding A Voice’s invitation to Zeitgeist Irland 24, the yearlong presentation of Irish culture to German audiences.

Clonmel audiences will be able to hear Marian’s choral pieces in both the Irish Youth Choir performance at STAC Chapel on Saturday 8th March (International Women’s Day) and the Chamber Choir Ireland concert at Old St Mary’s Church on Sunday 9th March. All details and tickets are on www.findingavoice.ie 

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