Prestigious international musical honour for Galway composer Jane O'Leary
Galway composer and the co-founder of Music for Galway and MusicConnects, Jane O’Leary, is “deeply honoured” to be the first Irish composer elected as an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM).
She joins a small group of renowned composers who have achieved this honour – they include Arvo Pärt, Maurice Ravel, Kaija Saariaho, Tōru Takemitsu and her former Professor at Princeton University, Milton Babbitt.The ISCM, which works to promote new music from around the world, only grants honorary membership to people who are deemed to have earned remarkable international achievements in the genre of contemporary music.
Consisting of 60 organisations in more 50 countries, ISCM members promote contemporary music in all its forms, strengthening musical life in their local areas, and making contemporary compositions and their creators known to the world.
The annual ISCM World New Music Days festival is the main way in which the ISCM achieves this goal. Organised by a different host country annually, the festival presents music from each of the member sections, showcasing a wide diversity of new music practice.
Jane, who is originally from Hartford, Connecticut, has been living in Ireland since 1972, after moving her with her Waterford-born husband, Pat, who lectured in the then UCG. They met when he was a Fulbright student in the US.
She has been playing piano since she was four years of age, having taken it up of her own volition and credits her mother, who had trained as an artist but worked as a housewife, for nurturing her creativity. J
"I got my artistic ability from my mother," she said, "a way of seeing things differently and seeing things that I wouldn't have seen otherwise".
Jane went on to graduate from Vassar College and then did a PhD in composition from Princeton University.
She loved the West of Ireland, where they moved following Pat's appointment to UCG, but the lack of classical music locally was an issue. So she co-founded Music for Galway in the early 1980s and was later instrumental in founding the Galway Music Residency (now MusicConnects). The renowned ConTempo quartet have been its musicians in residence for more than two decades.
In recognition of her many achievements, Jane was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music Degree by the National University of Ireland in 2007.
Those achievements include being a leading contemporary composer. As artistic director and pianist of the Concorde ensemble, which she founded, she has nurtured the development of new music in Ireland and promoted its performance worldwide since 1976.
Jane was honoured by the National Concert Hall last year when it gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award and staged a concert in her honour.
Her latest accolade came about after she was nominated for honorary membership of ISCM by the Contemporary Music Centre – the CMC is the Irish section of the organisation.
When ISCM members held their annual assembly last month, during the 2026 World New Music Days festival in Bucharest, the Deputy Director of the CMC, Jonathan Grimes, presented Jane's nomination to the group.
Members then voted and Jane, along with Romanian composer Doina Rotaru, received honorary membership.
Jonathan Grimes praised Jane's “extensive and profound” contribution to new music in Ireland and worldwide, and highlighted her “dedicated and tireless work as a composer, pianist, organiser and the founder of Concorde”.Her nomination to this international body felt “particularly important” to the Contemporary Music Centre, he added, because Jane had become the first Irish composer to be recognised by the body. For Jane, it was an honour to be joining “such a distinguished list of composers” and she expressed her delight at representing Ireland in this international context. And for her, as always, it was all about the music. “It has been a privilege to work with musicians throughout my life, and I’m grateful to all who have shared this journey with me – teachers, performers, listeners, festival and concert promoters around the world, broadcasters, fellow composers, family and friends.”