Music

Contact Details

Title	Head of School of Music & Theatre
Address	School of Music & Theatre Department of Music St. Vincents Sundays Well Road
Telephone:	+353 21 490 4533
Email:	ei.ccu@reicremm
Title	Head of School
Address	Music University College Cork Cork Ireland
Telephone:	+353-21-490-3000
Fax:	+353 21 490 3000
Email:	ei.ccu@reicrem.m
Homepage:	Web Page

Biography:

(b Dublin, 1959) Academic, performer and composer, Mel Mercier is a Senior Lecturer in Music, programme coordinator of the MA in Ethnomusicology and Head of the School of Music and Theatre. He teaches courses in Irish traditional music, ethnomusicology, Indian classical music, West African traditional and popular musics, Javanese gamelan, and performance theory. He is the Director of the UCC Javanese gamelan Nyai Sekar Madu Sari, co-founder and director of the Cork-based, intercultural music ensemble TRASNA, director of the From the Sources project, project leader on the Henebry/O'Neill wax cylinder digitization project at UCC and curator of FUAIM: Music at UCC.

The son of original Chieftains bodhrán player, the late Peadar Mercier, he plays bodhrán, bones and a range of international percussion instruments. He has performed and collaborated with pianist and composer, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin for over twenty-five years. Throughout the 1980s, he performed extensively in Europe and the USA with John Cage and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (Roaratorio, Inlets, Duets). He has also performed and recorded with many of the leading Irish traditional musicians and has presented bodhrán and bones workshops in the USA and Europe for more than twenty years. As a composer he works regularly with theatre director Deborah Warner and actor Fiona Shaw. Recent theatre composition commissions include Sétanta (Fibin/Abbey Theatre 2011), The Winter's Tale (Corcadorca/Cork Opera House 2011), The Passing and East Pier (Abbey Theatre 2011), The School for Scandal (Barbican 2011) and Man of Aran (Once Off productions 2010). Other compositions for the theatre also includes: Mother Courage (NT London); Happy Days (NT London/Greece/Paris/Madrid/New York/Amsterdam/Abbey Theatre); The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Another (NT London); Fewer Emergencies (Royal Court, London); Medea (Drama Desk Award nomination - Abbey Theatre/West End/Broadway/Paris); Julius Caesar (London/Paris/Madrid/Luxembourg). Other compositions include: From Cuil Aodha to Java (2011), Fleischmann in Java (2010), The Beauty Queen of Affane (2009), Kelly and Andy (2005) and Telephones and Gongs (2004), all for UCC Gamelan Ensemble, and Panarama (Signature Music for Cork 2005: European Capital of Culture).