2024 Music for Schools Competition Finalists Concert Adjudicators
Waltons New School of Music
We are delighted to announce our 2024 Waltons RTÉ lyric fm Music for Schools Competition Finalists Concert Adjudicators, Zoë Conway and Liam Ó Maonlaí!
The Finalists Concert will take place in the National Concert Hall on Monday, 8 April. See the Competition web page for more information about the Music for Schools Competition.
Zoë Conway
Zoë is a renowned Irish fiddle / violin player and composer, equally at home in both traditional and classical styles. She demonstrated her abilities early on by winning the All-Ireland Senior Fiddle Champion title at the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in 2001. A year later, Riverdance composer Bill Whelan (who has also been a Finalists Concert Adjudicator in 2014 and 2017), produced her first solo album, Zoë Conway. She has since recorded a second album (joined by the renowned guitarist Steve Cooney and percussionist Robbie Harris) entitled The Horse’s Tail and performed around the world, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with a diverse range of artists and groups, including Nick Cave, Dónal Lunny (also a Finalists Concert Adjudicator in 2013 and 2019), Lisa Hannigan, Máirtín O’Connor, Lou Reed, Damien Rice and Rodrigo y Gabriela, among others.
Zoë has performed at numerous international festivals, including Glastonbury, Electric Picnic, L’Orient, Tonder and WOMAD, as well as in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, including the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, Carnegie Hall and the Broadway Gershwin Theatre in New York and such historic sites as the Great Wall of China and the Kremlin in Moscow. She was voted Best Traditional Female of the Year in Irish Music magazine and is also a featured musician on the current Leaving Certificate Music syllabus. With her husband, guitarist John McIntyre, Zoë has recorded two albums, Go Mairir i Bhfad and Zoë Conway and John McIntyre Live in Concert, and performed widely. (The BBC has called them ‘one of the best folk duos on the planet.’) She is also passionate about music education and regularly facilitates workshops and gives lectures on the merits of classical and traditional music on the violin.
Liam Ó Maonlaí
Liam has been a musician all his life, winning an under-18 All-Ireland award for his skills on the bodhrán. He first formed a band called The Complex with childhood friend Kevin Shields and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig. He then formed a group called An Fonn Tonn with Fiachna Ó Braonáin, a schoolmate at Coláiste Eoin, to enter Slógadh, Gael Linn’s annual national music and arts competition, and the group became The Hothouse Flowers in 1984 with the addition of guitarist Peter O’Toole. (Slógadh was an important platform for young artists; it was there that Clannad, Altan and Dolores O’Riordan first gained recognition.) The Flowers began writing original songs and performing, although there was little money in it. (Calling themselves ‘The Incomparable Benzini Brothers’, Liam and Fiachna busked to make enough to pay the rent.) But the Flowers’ soon reputation grew, with Rolling Stone magazine calling them ‘the best unsigned band in Europe’. In 1986, Bono saw the group performing on television and offered his support. They released their first single, ‘Love Don’t Work This Way’, on U2’s Mother Records label, which quickly led to a deal with London Records and the release of their first album, People, the most successful debut album in Irish history.
The group has since released five more albums: Home (1990), Songs from the Rain (1993), Born (1998), Into Your Heart (2004) and Let’s Do This Thing (2016). Liam has also released two of his own albums – Rian (2005) and To Be Touched (2008) – and he has continued to perform throughout Ireland and around the world on his own, with The Hothouse Flowers and in collaboration with numerous Irish and international musicians, including Bobby McFerrin, Toumani Diabaté, Tim Finn, Andy White and traditional musicians in America, Australia, Europe, India, Japan, Morocco and Scandinavia. His 2008 documentary Dambé: The Mali Project tells the story of his 5,000-kilometre cross-cultural musical adventure with the uilleann piper Paddy Keenan and friends, and features performances from the Festival au Désert in Mali.
Zoë and Liam will be joined as adjudicators by Aideen Walton, Co-Director of the Waltons RTÉ lyric fm Music for Schools Competition.
Produced by Waltons New School of Music and generously supported by RTÉ lyric fm, the Waltons RTÉ lyric fm Music Music for Schools Competition is a non-profit annual national event celebrating and supporting music in Irish schools.