Broadcast, Radio & Music Supervision
My first foray into broadcasting work was in 1994 in Barcelona when I co-presented a two-hour radio show on Contraband FM. Back in Dublin, from the late 1990s until 2002 I had two shows on Jazz FM playing soul, funk, jazz and rare grooves on Fridays and jazz/easy listening on Sunday mornings. More recently I had a show on internet station Power FM which centred on Irish Electronica. For Electric Picnic 2006 I was behind the mike for Body and Soul FM playing tunes from artists performing at the Picnic and interviewing artists and musicians about their work.
In addition to my breadth of musical knowledge I am told that my strengths as a broadcaster lie in my relaxed presenting style and passion for diverse musical genres as well as a sense of fun. I have quite a bit of acting experience and have appeared in various commercials and radio productions over the years – I enjoy getting into character and this experience has been useful for my presenting work.
Over the years I have sourced music for product launches and for awards ceremonies in the corporate sector as well as music for RTE Arts series. More recently I have become involved in the area of music sourcing and supervision for film and television, an area of work I really enjoy. It involves a huge amount of research and preparation but the end result when matching music to scenes is immensely satisfying and the opportunities for creative collaboration with film-makers and musicians are fantastic.
Many of the projects I have worked on were documentaries. Having helped with the sourcing of music for her first film Painting for Miles I was approached by director Dearbhla Glynn (Luachra Productions) to work as music supervisor on her documentary Dust Devils based on the legendary Burning Man Festival. Putting together the soundtrack I focused exclusively on music produced by Irish-based artists, including established acts such as Kila and Cathy Davey as well as less well-known artists such as Rollers/Sparkers and Nurse with Wound. I have subsequently acted as music supervisor on a number of feature and short documentaries made by Dearbhla and have typically used music produced by leftfield Irish acts, for example Seti the First, Hulk, Halfset and Chequerboard.
A perk of the job: travelling to Mali for the Festival au Desert for the world premiere of Dearbla Glynn’s documentary Dembe: The Mali Project which focuses on the musical adventures in Mali of musicians Liam O’Maonlai and Paddy Keenan.
My first feature film as music co-ordinator was the Irish produced Happy Ever Afters (Newgrange Pictures) directed by Stephen Burke and starring Golden Globe winner Sally Hawkins. Tackling serious themes with a light touch this movie focused on two wedding parties held in the same venue. I really enjoyed the process of sourcing and selecting music for this quirky movie. Artists featured on the soundtrack included Mick Flannery; Little Drummer Boy; and Saville.
In 2012 I worked on series 2 of the BBC comedy-detective series VEXED starring Toby Stephens & Miranda Raison. For this series I drew on a very wide range of international artists and genres including Muse, the Black Keys and Paloma Faith. Other artists featured included Wise Guys, Shirley Bassey and Chaka Khan. For Irish TV I have acted as a Music Advisor for the popular RTE series ‘Raw’, sourcing Irish-produced music for the show.
I was delighted to act as music consultant on My Name is Emily directed by Simon Fitzmaurice which was selected to open the 2015 Galway Film Fleadh. Starring Evanna Lynch the film is a classy coming of age road movie and I worked hard to select tracks which chimed with the director’s distinctive aesthetic. A stand-out track for me was Lisa Flume’s haunting What we Call Love and the movie also featured beautiful tracks by Lisa Hannigan and Cat Dowling and a track specially written by James Vincent McMorrow.