Jennifer Mc Cay

Biography

Jennifer lectures on the Academic and Musicianship Faculties in the Royal Irish Academy of Music, an associate college of TCD, and examines for their national Examinations Office (Senior Examiner 2011-15). She graduated from TCD School of Education with a Bachelor in Music Education before pursuing postgraduate studies at University College Dublin where she completed a Masters in Musicology and PhD. Research interests include investigating the music of composers living in Ireland, her PhD is entitled ‘From the Besieged City : The Orchestral Music of Kevin O’Connell’ (2014). Music Education has remained to the core of Jennifer’s activities and interests through her own teaching, including courses on Music History, Music Analysis and Criticism, Harmony and Counterpoint and supervision of Dissertation and Capstone projects as well as teaching junior musicianship classes. Further studies include a PG Dip. in Positive Health from RCSI, which is integrated into all teaching as well as a separate Holistic module. Jennifer has been a Council Member of the Society of Musicology in Ireland, co‐editor and contributor for the Association of Irish Composers’ New Music Journal and liturgical pianist at the Pro-Cathedral. Current engagements include violinist with The Hibernian Orchestra and singer with Blingmasters.

CURRENT LECTURES

• Modules at the Royal Irish Academy of Music include Music History, Analysis and Criticism, Harmony and Counterpoint, and dissertation supervision for the various degree programmes of Music Education, Music Performance, Composition and Vocal Studies.
• Junior musicianship
• Other activities include piano teaching, keyboard tutor for Music Generation and liturgical keyboard accompaniment.

Selection of PRESENTATIONS

• Kevin O’Connell’s North: Modernism, Sibelius and the European Fringe’ at Music and the Nordic Breakthrough: Sibelius/Nielsen/ Glazunov, University of Oxford, August 2015
• ‘Northern Irish, Irish, British or European? The Orchestral Music of Kevin O’Connell’ at Music from the Perspective of Globalization, I.J. Paderewski Academy of Music, Poznań, Poland, April 2015.
• ‘Why bother with Theory?’ at the inaugural RIAM Teaching Network Conference, RIAM, Dublin, July 2014. 
• ‘Creative processes in Kevin O’Connell’s Four Orchestral Pieces’, paper presented at the Society for Musicology in Ireland Annual Conference, Dundalk, June 2012.