Photo: Blackie Bouffant. Bluebell Woods, Knockvicar, Co. Roscommon, Ireland
“Without a doubt, hers is the most original compositional voice to emerge in Ireland in the last 20 years.” – Michael Dervan, The Irish Times
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1974. Following her study of composition at Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Kevin Volans in Dublin Walshe graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition in June 2002. Since then she has been the recipient of endless awards, residencies and commissions, spanning both her composition and vocal work to an international broadcast.
She is now one of a great number of composers contributing to an explosion of new writing, pieces with a bold, subversive approach like that of XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, perhaps her best known work. The Grúpat collective, a fictional ensemble or “insurgency group” of alter egos that Walshe founded in 2007 to generate sound works, photography, self-built instruments and costume designs, serves as another example for Walshe’s enticing provocation, an artist who delivers astute, sometimes savage observations on every day life, and who’s next move nobody can guess.
