Some of you have been with me since the beginning. For others, this may be the first piece you have read from this publication. For the past twenty-five years, The Journal of Music has been documenting and discussing music in Ireland. One never knows the impact of this work, and it is not easy in the current media environment, but I would be concerned were it not there.
Published in The Journal of Music on Monday 13 October 2025.
In July 2014, Heather Humphreys was appointed Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Six years after the economic crash, it remained a grim time for artists. The Arts Council budget had been cut for seven consecutive years, from €83m in 2007 to €56.7m in 2014 – a 32% drop and a complete stripping back of the arts and music ecosystem. A few months beforehand, the then Director of the Arts Council, Orlaith McBride, had said that, for artists, this period was about ‘a fundamental issue of survival’.
Count Me Out: Selected Writings of Filmmaker Bob Quinn, edited by Toner Quinn and published in February of this year, was selected as one of Sight & Sound magazine’s summer reading recommendations in the latest issue. Here’s what Reviews Editor Kate McCabe had to say:
Tá áthas orm a rá go bhfuil mé i measc na nEalaíontóirí Cónaithe i Stiúideo Cuan do 2025, in éineacht leis an amhránaí Mairéad Ní Fhlatharta, an t-aisteoir Diarmuid de Faoite agus an file Máire Holmes. Thosnóidh an tsraith imeachtaí ar an Déardaoin, 2 Deireadh Fómhair, ag 8 i.n., agus leanfaidh siad ar aghaidh gach Déardaoin go Nollaig. Tá fáilte roimh chách agus tá cead isteach saor in aisce. Tuilleadh eolais anseo: https://journalofmusic.com/news/stiuideo-cuan-announces-2025-artists-residence
A review of Jennifer Walshe’s MARS opera at the Galway International Arts Festival (25 July 2025).
Oil spills as the ejaculate of God, birthing colonies on Mars, women without children being ‘virtualised’ so they are dead to everyone but themselves. These are some of the imaginings in Jennifer Walshe’s MARS, her first large-scale collaboration with Irish National Opera following the 2021 micro-opera Libris Solar and a range of other dramatic works. It is also the latest in a series of significant contemporary operas at the Galway International Arts Festival, following Donnacha Dennehy’s The Second Violinist (2017) and The First Child (2021) and Brian Irvine’s Least Like the Other (2019).
A review from the Journal of Music – Trá Pháidín at Stiúideo Cuan on 11 July.
Peadar-Tom Mercier is kneeling with his electric guitar, holding a book in Irish, musing to himself. He drops a comment about the housing crisis – the short-hand of a generation. The room is full. The stage is stretched to hold two drum kits either side.
What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music Toner Quinn The Journal of Music, 2024 ISBN: 9781739577407 (HB)
Writer, publisher, and fiddle player Toner Quinn has long championed the Irish music industry, leading and facilitating discussion through his creation and editorialship of the Journal of Music. In his new book, Quinn brings together selections of his own writing in the Journal from 2000–2023. The essays cover a wide variety of topics from performance reviews to obituaries and to thoughtful opinion pieces that shed light on many aspects of Irish music over the last two decades. The book offers a unique retrospective on a tumultuous period in Irish music history: a thoughtful, critical, wide-ranging exploration that will serve both as a primary source for future historians and, hopefully, as a starting point for further discussion.
On 9 May 2025, I gave the keynote talk at ‘Cruinniú na Ceirde: Unravelling an identity for Irish Craft’, a gathering of the Irish craft community in Dublin. The title of my talk was ‘What Ireland Can Teach the World About Music’. The event was hosted by the RDS and a report on the day has now been published, with the following comments:
“People were deeply engaged with Toner’s concepts. There was electricity in the room. There was a sense of something being unlocked during the presentation, many sensations and recognisable emotional connections aligned with the making of craft. Echoes of identity that are shared with creating music and creating objects with our hands and minds, moved through the crowd. There was a recognition in how our practice is so firmly embedded in our lives, that when it is misused or exploited, it affects us profoundly. There were moments of connection, learning and mutual respect during this presentation.
“The presentation, in the words of outgoing arts committee chair, Marie Bourke, ‘was a revelation and an inspiration’. It challenged the community to think deeply about the correlations with craft and Irish music. When issues of renewing or protecting cultural heritage are discussed, the inevitable question of power and ownership arises: Who determines what heritage should be protected and what should be renewed?
Toner Quinn 