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Staff Profiles

Dr Amanda Feery

PhD, M.Phil, BA

Contact Details

Lecturer Above the Bar
10 Newcastle Road
10 Upper Newcastle
H91 F677
E: amanda.feery@universityofgalway.ie

Biography

Amanda Feery is a composer working with acoustic, electronic, and improvised music, having written for chamber and vocal ensembles, film, opera, theatre, and multimedia. After graduating from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Music in 2006, she continued her studies in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin, completing an M.Phil in 2009. Amanda was the Mark Nelson Fellow in Music at Princeton University, completing her PhD in Music Composition in 2019. Her research focused on Kate Bush's song suite, The Ninth Wave. Whilst in the U.S., she formed collaborative relationships with several ensembles and musicians including Alarm Will Sound, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Mise-en, Bearthoven, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, and cellist Amanda Gookin. Closer to home, past collaborators include Crash Ensemble, ConTempo Quartet, the National Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Choir Ireland, This is How We Fly, Dublin Guitar Quartet, Paul Roe, Michelle O Rourke, and Lina Andonovska. Her work has been featured at New Music Dublin, First Fortnight Festival, Gleo Festival, and Dublin Fringe Festival, among others, and she has been composer-in-residence at Bang on a Can Summer Festival, SOUNDscape, and Greywood Arts. Her 2019 residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais focused on recording piano improvisations on public pianos in Paris.
Recent projects include A Thing I Cannot Name, an opera film commissioned by Irish National Opera with a libretto by Megan Nolan, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation, commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra. Future projects include In an Occupied Zone, a work for solo cello at Music for Galway's Cellissimo festival, and a new work for the Black Page Orchestra and Virtual Singer, commissioned by Music Current Festival. Amanda was the 2023 recipient of the Markievicz Award for Music. The funding from this award will see the completion of Romantic Ireland, a radio work in response to Éamon de Valera¿s speech, `On Language and the Irish Nation¿ with libretto by Eimear Walshe. A section of this piece will be part of Eimear Walshe's installation at the Venice Art Biennale 2024.

Research Interests

Acoustic Composition; Electro-Acoustic Composition; Film Music; Opera; Polystylism; Improvisation; Synthesis

Sound recording

	Year	Publication
	(2023)	SOLA: Music for Viola by Women Composers. Amanda Feery, Rosalind Ventris (2023) SOLA: Music for Viola by Women Composers. Delphian Records Sound recording [Details]

Honours and Awards

Year	Title	Awarding Body
2023	Markievicz Award	Arts Council of Ireland
2020	Ball State Symphony Band Commission Award	Ball State University
2020	Music Bursary Award	Arts Council of Ireland
2018	Third Coast Percussion Composer Partnership	Third Coast Percussion
2016	Theodore Front Prize for Orchestral Music	International Alliance for Women in Music
2016	Sean O'Riada Prize for Choral Music	Cork International Choral Festival
2013	Jerome Hynes Emerging Composer Award	National Concert Hall
2012	Naumberg Fellowship	Princeton University
2009	West Cork Chamber Music Festival Composer Award	West Cork Chamber Music Festival

Professional Associations

	Association	Function	From / To
	Contemporary Music Centre	Associate Composer	/

Education

Year	Institution	Qualification	Subject
2019	Princeton University	PhD	Music Composition
2006	Trinity College Dublin	BA	Music
2009	Trinity College Dublin	M.Phil	Music and Media Technologies

Community Engagement

	Title	Type	From / To
	Outreach	National Concert Hall Creative Lab	/

Teaching Interests

My Teaching Philosophy
My teaching objectives are centred on each student being attuned to the process of composition, not solely the product. This involves a student discovering their own voice and aesthetic, but I also aim to develop their understanding that creativity is a developing process. It involves peaks and troughs, with different definitions and ways in which a work demonstrates originality that is not exclusively related to the notion of innovation. I strive for a learning experience that respects the intuitions of each student, encouraging them to think about their artistic endeavors, to give significance to their life experiences and their preferences in music, art, technology, etc. My course design allows for the acquisition of an ever-widening musical knowledge, a diverse set of tools and techniques to serve personal expression and to solve some of the rational problems of day-to-day composing. I see the classroom as a learning community of creators, which includes myself, and where we can each share in the evolution of our musical thinking, discoveries, influences, and progress. I am strongly committed to an inclusive pedagogy; a polystylistic approach that utilises strengths from a multitude of styles to create a working knowledge for students in how music can be put together. I promote the idea that music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive, and I consider students of different musical backgrounds a strength in the classroom.

Teaching Interests
Music Composition; Music Technology; Film Music; Scoring and Arranging; Opera; Music History; Women in Popular Music; Irish Traditional Music; Folk Song; Punk Music; Radio

Modules Taught

Term/Year	Module Title	Module Code
2021	Music Project	MU3105
2022	Composition Portfolio	MU4103
2022	Introduction to Composition	MU2102
2022	Women in Popular Music	MU4101
2022	Scoring and Arranging	MU3103
2021	The Practice and Exploration of the Creative Arts	DT2113
2021	Introduction to Sound Technology	MU2107
2021	Music History 2	MU2108