Kevin McNally is a musician and researcher from west Cork with research interests in ecomusicology, ethnomusicology, popular music and community music. In his composition and facilitation he focuses on work that involves non-professional musicians and encourages the use of sound to forge interconnection between humans and our ecosystems. As a community musician, he leads a gamelan ensemble in Skibbereen, Co. Cork as part of an innovative arts for health scheme. He has recently completed a PhD in arts practice, which considers sound as a form of ecological perception by highlighting the vibratory resonance that links performers, instruments and listeners in any sounding event. 

As a performer he has played in traditional Irish music bands and rock bands, and, in 2010, he founded the West Cork Ukulele Orchestra (https://www.facebook.com/westcorkuke/) with whom he recorded, performed and led workshops at festivals all across the country. He has over twenty years’ experience as music educator and workshop facilitator and has created concerts, installations and film soundtracks featuring new music for ensembles of non-professional musicians. He is assistant director of the Irish Gamelan Orchestra, a professional ensemble that has toured to Indonesia and last year gave a run of performances in London’s Coronet theatre with Gare St Lazare’s production of Samuel Beckett’s How It Is Part 2. He currently teaches gamelan and Irish music in the Department of Music at University College Cork and The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick.

Alongside teaching and performing, he is the co-director of the Arts Council-supported Clonakilty International Guitar Festival (www.clonguitarfest.com), one of the longest running and most respected events in County Cork. Now in its 20th year the festival runs over ten days and has attracted some of the biggest international talents in independent music to west Cork. The duties involved include securing funding; programming all the performances and workshops of the festival; organising all practical aspects of travel, accommodation and hospitality for artists; liaising with artists, venues and crew to provide all the technical aspects of production, including sound equipment; communicating with audiences via digital platforms and traditional media; and managing budgets and reports for our funders. He also took charge of all the community-oriented aspects of the festival, ultimately creating a mini-festival called ‘Reverb’ that brings the benefits of the festival to more marginalised members of the community.