Ferdia Ó Cairbre

Ferdia Ó Cairbre is a composer from Dublin. He completed a Bachelor of Music withMaynooth University in 2025 (First-Class Honours) and is currently approaching the end of his MA in Contemporary Music Practices (also with Maynooth University), having received multiple scholarships throughout both degrees. He is excited to commence his doctorate in
Maynooth this year with a project that will study, through composition, the role of the Irish language in contemporary music and the underexplored musicolinguistic connections between the two areas.

Since Ferdia started composing in 2017, many of his works have received festival performances, including five New Music Dublin premieres in the National Concert Hall and a Pipeworks appearance. In 2021, two of his choral works were sung by Chamber Choir Ireland as part of their Choral Postcards project, and in 2024, Anne-Marie O’Farrell and Timo Kinnunen performed his work, In Eleventh Heaven, in Kalajoki, Finland. Ferdia has compositional and performance experience across genres such as (contemporary) classical music, Irish traditional music, jazz, choral music, and electroacoustic music, and his work has appeared in short films and other media formats. He has also contributed to the Irish Traditional Music Archive as a writer and performer.

Ferdia has taught piano and theory for several years and has been conductor and assistant conductor of the National Concert Hall’s Training Choir and two youth choirs respectively. He currently holds positions as organist in various locations in Dublin and Meath, and has performed lunchtime concerts and recitals in Maynooth University for Entente Florale Europe and other groups.