Harp
2019
Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, and sound artist from Belfast, Ireland. Her recent work has combined traditional music with bronze sculpture, sound art and movement sensors. Her compositions have been presented on BBC and RTÉ television and radio, in theatre productions, and at international festivals and conferences, such as the International Computer Music Conference, York Festival of Ideas, and Belfast Festival at Queen’s. Úna is co-founder of Quiet Music Night, an evening dedicated to performing quiet music of all genres, especially new and experimental music. She holds a BA in Astrophysics from Cambridge University, and a PhD on New Technologies and Experimental Practices in Contemporary Irish Traditional Music, from Queen’s University Belfast.
In 2013 Úna was selected from an international audition process as a Future Music Performance Fellow at the Atlantic Music Festival, Maine, USA. She was an Artist in Residence at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris in Spring 2015. Úna also works as a sound engineer specializing in Irish traditional music, and experimental, live electronic and multichannel music, a role in which she travels worldwide. She curates the JamJar series of contemporary and experimental music for Moving On Music in Belfast.
In 2016 Úna was Artist in Residence at the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas (IPLAI) at McGill University, Montréal, where she developed her composition work with harp and motion sensor. This residency was supported by a James M. Flaherty Research Scholarship, awarded by the Ireland Canada University Foundation, and through funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.
Úna is currently the Rosamund Harding Research Fellow in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.