It is with immense sadness that we report the death of Dr David Connolly, who passed away on 28 April 2020. He had been a member of the SMI since 2005. David was a Lecturer in the Department of Creative Arts, Media and Music at Dundalk Institute of Technology, and a much-loved colleague also at Maynooth University. He graduated from Maynooth University with a first-class honours degree in music and mathematics, a first-class honours MA in performance and musicology and a Higher Diploma in Education. He studied organ with Professor Gerard Gillen as organ scholar at St Patrick’s College Maynooth and Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral. From 2005 to 2007 he was director of the Maynooth University Chamber Choir and in 2009 was appointed the first director of the NUI Maynooth Ladies’ Choir. David contributed several articles to The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, and engaged generously with fellow colleagues through the SMI's postgraduate and plenary conferences.
It is perhaps for his work as an organ scholar that David is best known. In 2013 he completed his PhD on French organ music at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama under the direction of Dr David Mooney. He served generously as a member of the committee of Pipeworks, the Dublin Diocesan Advisory commission on church music and as Honorary Secretary for the Irish committee of the Royal School of Church Music. Earlier, in 2006, he had been appointed organist and director of music at St Michael’s Church, Dún Laoghaire, where he expertly organized the annual summer organ concert series, which has a long and rich performance tradition. Founded in 1974 by Professor Gerard Gillen, the series had established itself as an organ festival on par with the most distinguished summer organ series across Europe. Under David's direction, it continued to welcome distinguished international performers to our shores and to introduce innovative repertoire, including many premieres of works by Irish composers. He put his own stamp on the festival, notably by including concerts where the organ is in partnership with other performers, chamber choirs and various imaginative instrumental combinations -- for example, uilleann piles with organ. David himself, and many of the performers he invited, addressed audiences intermittently through their performances, introducing pieces, defining the unique contribution each composer makes, thereby offering a very enriching series for both musicians and the general public.
We in the SMI, and in the wider music community, will miss his warm and generous presence.
