Professor Una Hunt

PERFORMANCE Una Hunt is one of Ireland’s leading and most versatile pianists and has performed many concertos with Ireland’s orchestras including the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra and the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO). She has given modern premieres with orchestra of music of Irish interest by Hamilton Harty, E. J. Moeran and Howard Ferguson and gave the first modern Irish performance of Moscheles’s Recollections of Ireland (1826) with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. Una is an active recitalist performing programmes in Britain, Ireland, Europe, the USA and Russia with notable soloists including flautist James Galway and violist Bruno Giuranna. She has also toured extensively with her violinist sister, Fionnuala, and is a founder member of several prominent chamber music groups including the most recent, Trio Celtique. Una is equally at home collaborating with singers and has recorded CDs with leading Irish vocalists Patricia Bardon, Máire Flavin, Rachel Kelly and others. She has recently produced unknown Irish operas in prestige venues such as the National Opera House, Wexford and the National Concert Hall, and has co-ordinated video and audio footage for the RTE Player, RTE Culture, and various Youtube and podcast sites. Particularly noted for her work in rediscovering the music of historic Irish composers, Una has curated and performed this repertoire at venues such as the National Concert Hall, the National Library of Ireland, Wexford Festival Opera and in the UK, the USA (including Carnegie Hall) and Russia. Her discography extends to 14 world-premiere recording collections of Irish interest including the first complete archive of Moore’s Irish Melodies: My Gentle Harp (2008). She is also an award-winning producer of features and documentaries for RTÉ Lyric fm and the BBC. Recent performance projects include the production and video of Charles V. Stanford’s first opera, The Veiled Prophet, at Wexford Festival Opera 2019 for which the score needed reconstruction. Also in 2019, Una presented M.W. Balfe’s operetta, The Sleeping Queen at Blackwater Valley Opera Festival and at the Mananan International Festival, Isle of Man. She is presently publishing The Thomas Moore Songbook for Carysfort Press/Peter Lang with seminal research funding from TU Dublin and has assembled a new two-volume edition of unknown piano works entitled The Irish Piano Album for publication later this year. Among Una’s ground-breaking world-premiere recordings. are Irish Fantasy (Continuum, 1992), The Music of Joan Trimble (Naxos/Marco Polo, 1999), Complete Piano Music of E. J. Moeran (ASV/Sanctuary, 2003), Shower of Pearls, the Music of George Alexander Osborne (RTÉ Lyric fm, 2004) and, in association with the National Library – Fallen Leaves from an Irish Album (RTÉ Lyric fm, 2006). In 2012, a CD of the music of William Vincent Wallace was released as a companion to the facsimile publication of his 1854 Album. A CD of the piano music of the nineteenth century pianist-composer, Fanny Robinson, is due for release within the next year along with the Thomas Moore Songbook. Through a ten-year music consultancy with the National Library of Ireland, Una spearheaded developments with the Music Library Project. She was Artistic Director of the Musical Reflections concert series showcasing historic Irish musical figures and composers at the National Library and presented and produced Gems of Irish Opera featuring The Sleeping Queen, an unknown chamber opera by Michael William Balfe to mark the composer’s bicentenary in 2008. Balfe’s Sleeping Queen was subsequently performed to an international audience at Wexford Festival Opera (2013) and has recently received its first Dublin performance (Jan, 2018). The complete performance is available to view on the RTE Player. RESEARCH Una Hunt’s research interests place her at the forefront of digital archiving in music both in Ireland and around the world. This strategy is backed by the belief that innovation and cultural technology need to impact local communities and a wide audience in order to remain relevant in the modern world. She is particularly active in Performance-led Research, a relatively new concept in Ireland which she has fostered and promoted through her founding of The National Forum for Music Performance Research which she currently chairs. Una is series editor of a new collection of monographs on performance research for Peter Lang publishers, Oxford, each of which includes complementary audio-visual performance exemplars mounted on the internet. As the first recipient in Ireland of a PhD in Performance (Maynooth University, 2005; please see list of published research, papers delivered etc.)., she has project-managed many successful festivals, conferences, events and tours, along with recordings and archives associated with her research interests in Irish music, and has presented and produced numerous documentary features on the music of Ireland, notably for RTE Lyric fm. She presented and produced - John Beckett, the Man and his Music which won the prestigious Bronze category in Documentaries at the New York Festivals International Radio Awards 2017. Una Hunt has gone on to establish herself as a leading supervisor and instrumental teacher of PhD and Masters projects in performance. Earlier in her career she was a particularly successful piano teacher with numerous student successes at national and international competitions, which include the 2nd place at the International Mozart Competition in London. Participation on International juries includes the Liszt-Garrison International Piano Competition, Baltimore, Maryland, USA (2013); she has also commentated (on TV and radio) on the Dublin International Piano Competition (2003 and 2006). Una has given many master classes abroad – including the UK, Italy, France, Monaco, Poland, Russia and USA at centres such as the Jan Paderewski Academy of Music, Poznań, Poland (2010); the Russian Artists’ Academy, St Petersburg (2011) and the Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco (2017). She also undertook a prestigious residency (2008) and a visiting professorship (2012) at Hood College, Maryland, USA. Una has given numerous lecture-recitals at home and abroad including several lecturing tours in the USA. As one of the leading research authorities on the music of Ireland, Una has published widely. Her book, Sources and Style in Moore’s Irish Melodies (Routledge, 2017) has also been widely and favourably reviewed: please see – https://doi.org/10.35561/JSMI14194 She co-edited the multi-disciplinary volume France and Ireland, Notes and Narratives (Oxford Peter Lang, 2015) with Dr Mary Pierce - part of the Reimagining Ireland series founded by Dr Eamon Maher and AFIS at TU Dublin, Tallaght campus. For ten years, Una was music consultant to the National Library of Ireland during which time she completed a detailed report of their music holdings (2001) along with a biographical listing of Irish composers (2004). She was Artistic Director and Project Manager of the Musical Reflections series of concerts at the National Library, and also Gems of Irish Opera and CD recordings (2008). Una devised and set up the first digital Archive of historic music on open access on the World Wide Web: The National Archive of Irish Composers (2010) in association with NLI and DIT. Una’s PhD thesis was the first to acknowledge and provide a detailed study of the musical contribution made by one of Ireland's foremost pianist-composers, who enjoyed a considerable international reputation. Arguably the leading Irish pianist-composer of the nineteenth century, George Alexander Osborne was born in Limerick in 1806 and went to Europe as a young man, where he formed friendships with many of the great musical figures, particularly Berlioz and Chopin. He performed with legendary instrumentalists including Chopin, Liszt, Ernst and Piatti, and singers such as the celebrated Maria Malibran and the Limerick soprano, Catherine Hayes. Among his extensive catalogue of works were some enduring Victorian favourites such as La Pluie de Perles (Shower of Pearls). Una has recorded the first and only CD of Osborne’s music, Shower of Pearls (RTÉ Lyric fm, 2004). Since 2008, Una has devised and co-ordinated a significant diary of events to celebrate two hundred years since the first publication of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies in 1808. These include a competition for young Irish singers; a documentary series for RTÉ lyric fm, a multi-media exhibition and concert tours devoted to Moore’s Irish songs. The exhibition has had particular success touring to libraries throughout the island of Ireland; it has, to date, welcomed 100,000 visitors. A six-CD box set of all 124 Irish Melodies was produced as a world-premiere recording collection (My Gentle Harp, the Complete Collection) along with a separate CD selection of songs in their original settings, accompanied by a square piano of the period. In 2010, the Thomas Moore Festival travelled to Carnegie Hall, New York, where it received two standing ovations and a performance was also given in Russia to mark the unveiling of a sculpture honouring Moore at the University of St Petersburg. Una has also edited and published a facsimile music album with an accompanying CD of songs and piano music (Album 1854) to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Irish opera composer, William Vincent Wallace. She recently presented and performed a prestigious series of concerts at Wexford Festival Opera devoted to the music of Ireland - Irish Heritage at Wexford. A further collaboration in 2017 brought concerts entitled: The Thomas Moore Songbook to Wexford Festival Opera. Una is a major contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland and is a member of the Society of Musicology in Ireland (SMI). Her contribution to musical life in Ireland has been recognised with several distinctions and honours including an honorary DMus (Queens University Belfast, 2007), an honorary Professorship (University College Dublin, 2009), and a Professorship in Music Performance Research at TU Dublin Conservatoire. BROADCASTING Una Hunt is an experienced broadcaster and producer with two significant international awards to her name for the following programmes: John Beckett, the Man and his Music (June 2016) and The Wild Irish Girl and her Harp (2014) on the novelist, harpist and society cult figure, Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan). This last programme was a finalist in the Celtic Media Festival while ‘John Beckett’ received the Bronze award for documentaries, at the New York Festivals International Radio Awards 2017. Also in 2014, Una broadcast A Musical Calendar of Irish Saints (2014) on the unknown music written to venerate mediaeval Irish saints. The Snow is Dancing was a 150th-year birthday tribute to Claude Debussy (presented by Therese Fahy) and The Road to Maritana (2012) - a three-part bicentenary series on Irish opera composer, William Vincent Wallace. Other programmes of note are Piano Portrait: Fanny Robinson, on the little known nineteenth-century female pianist-composer of note; the 6-part series: My Gentle Harp on Moore’s Irish Melodies, and the critically-acclaimed 6-part series: Chopin Uncovered. All the above were broadcast features on RTÉ lyric fm.

performance, performance research, broadcasting