Fergal Scahill and Ryan Molloy

Multi-instrumentalist Fergal Scahill is best know as the fiddle player in award winning band We Banjo 3, recipients of the RTE Folk Awards Album of the Year 2018, Irish Times Album of the year in 2012 and two No. 1 albums on the Billboard bluegrass charts in the USA.

His career has spanned over 20 years, winning All-Ireland titles at the Fleadh Cheoil on multiple instruments and group competitions, including the Senior All Ireland Fiddle competition.

Most recently, Fergal has gained international recognition for his Fiddle Tune A Day on social media, sharing over 730 tunes with hundreds of collaborations and tens of millions of views.

Fergal has performed in over 30 countries and recorded on over 40 albums with musicians from all over the world, including three solo albums, six albums with his band We Banjo 3, two albums with his band Freewheel and two successful charity albums for Pieta House & The Hope foundation collaborating with some of the greats of Irish music.

Ryan Molloy’s compositional and performance work sits at the boundary of contemporary classical music and traditional Irish music and is internationally recognised for its crossgenre innovation, musicality, and deep-rooted exploration of place and time, as well as its breadth in working with a range of musicians from young amateurs to seasoned professionals.

Ryan has written over fifty works and his music has been performed to audiences on four continents for over fifteen years. His music has been broadcast both nationally and internationally, including BBC Radio 2, 3 & Radio Ulster, RTÉ Lyric FM, Radio 1 and Ráidió na Gaeltachta as well as on BBC 2, UTV, TG4 and BBC World.

Ryan has been commissioned by both RTÉ and the BBC, as well as a range of renowned performers such as Darragh Morgan, Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble & the Irish Chamber Orchestra. He has represented Ireland at the prestigious ISCM New Music Days in Hong Kong (2015), Vancouver (2017) and Auckland (2022, rescheduled from 2020).

He has recorded on over twenty albums as a pianist, composer and arranger. Described as a ‘milestone’ in traditional piano performance, 2019 saw the release of Ryan’s critically acclaimed first solo recording ‘pianophony’. 2021 sees the release of a new CD of music for uilleann pipes and piano (Tempered) as well as a new CD of vocal works, featuring the 30-minute song cycle ‘Buaine na Gaoithe’ performed by its commissioners, the Damselfly Trio. 2021 sees the première of works for the Westport Festival of Chamber Music, Dublin International Piano Competition and the ‘In Tune for Life Orchestra’ (a ‘trad orchestra’).

Ryan is Associate Professor of Composition at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.