Caitríona O'Leary
Caitríona O’Leary – Singer, Composer, Arranger, Music Director
www.caitrionaoleary.com
“Surely, national treasure status cannot be far away… O’Leary has a proud background as composer and singer in not just exploring roads less travelled, but of discovering paths not travelled at all.” The Sunday Business Post, July 2020
“Caitríona O’Leary’s wonderfully eclectic career is an ode to her talent for resurrecting timeless verse, rescuing it from obscurity, infusing it with innovative music and giving it contemporary context.” IrishPhiladelphia.com
Caitríona O’Leary, with a career spanning over three decades, is known internationally for her intense and passionate performances of Early Music and Traditional Irish song and as a composer. She has been widely acknowledged for her work in finding and performing lost or rarely-heard Irish music.
Her recording, The Wexford Carols, featuring guest artists Tom Jones, Rosanne Cash, and Rhiannon Giddens, reached #1 on the Billboard and Amazon charts. Her album with her band Anakronos, The Red Book of Ossory, was released worldwide in 2020 to rave reviews.
Of her recent CD, Citadel of Song, Plague-proof Ballate from Boccaccio's Decameron, (contemporary interpretations of the 14th century masterpiece) with Anakronos, Audio Magazine (Germany) writes “With this revival of 14th century Italian love poetry, the Irish singer Caitríona O’Leary confirms her status as the world’s leading early music avant-gardist.” It was released as a double album on Heresy Records in October 2022.
In 2021 she released Strange Wonders, The Wexford Carols Volume II. Containing more rare Christmas carols from the Wexford Carol tradition, this album was produced by the legendary Ethan Johns and Dom Monks and features Caitríona singing with folk and classical music stars Seth Lakeman, John Smith, Clara Sanabras, Olov Johansson, Simone Colavecchi, Mel Mercier, Deirdre O'Leary, John Hearne, Alison Balsom and the choir Stile Antico.
In 2006, Caitríona, alongside stage director Eric Fraad, co-founded the Early Music ensemble eX. Fusing historically informed musical performance with meticulously crafted storytelling and exquisite visual presentations, their staged productions—including Shipwrecked, Possessed, Christ Lag in Todes Banden, and The Rape of the Lock—have captivated audiences at venues and festivals both in Ireland and internationally.
Her film work includes co-conceiving, music directing/arranging & performing with Anakronos in the multi-award-winning The Island of Saints and Day Six, and recently marrying the poetry of Jori Graham with the music of J.S. Bach to perform, alongside members of the Liz Roche Dance Company, in the award-winning Partita (all directed by Eric Fraad).
She has recorded over twenty-five critically acclaimed albums with her Trad band Dúlra, her Early Music performance ensemble eX, Anakronos & the ensembles Sequentia, The Harp Consort and Joglaresa amongst others and has worked closely with many of early music's leading artists including, Barbara Thornton & Ben Bagby (most notably three international tours as soloist in Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum with Sequentia), Andrew Lawrence King (e.g. North American, Mexican, European & Australian tours as soloist in Carolan’s Harp with The Harp Consort), Christopher Hogwood, Konrad Junghänel, Pedro Memelsdorff, etc.
Caitríona is also active as a soloist in contemporary music productions and recordings. In November 2016 she played leading roles in Roger Doyle's electronic opera Heresy and in 2019 performed on the studio recording of his iGirl. In 2020 Caitríona performed in Nick Roth's composition Crann. She recently premiered Boris Bergmann’s song cycle Taumelnd von Glut, which was then released on their album Mystics & Cynics (June 2025).
Known for her performances of Irish language interpretations of the songs of Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, and Brecht/Weill for IMRAM, Féile Litríochta Gaeilge, she released an Irish version of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now (“transcreated” by Gabriel Rosenstock) as Ón Dá Thaobh in February 2020. In October 2019 she composed and performed a show based on a new Irish language version of the poetry of Sappho for IMRAM and in 2020 composed and performed the video piece StampHaikuSong, a multi-voice & instrument response to Gabriel Rosenstock’s bilingual haikus that he wrote in response to Irish postage stamps. In November 2023 she performed her electronic/jazz/folk inspired version of Schubert’s Winterreise for IMRAM at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin.
Always a champion of unaccompanied song and ever-interested in alternative performance formats, Caitríona has been a regular artist at the Cáca Milis Cabaret and was a weekly performer at Le Dernier Paradis. To create and perform during the COVID19 pandemic, she started Unaccompanied – a weekly series of 42 micro-concerts of "beautiful, intentionally-unaccompanied song", livestreamed from her room.
Caitríona has toured and performed around the world, including such venues as the Royal Albert Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Palacio de Bellas Artes Mexico, National Concert Hall Dublin, and Cité de la Musique to name a few. Festival engagements include Halle Handel Festival, Beethovenfest Bonn, Tage Alter Musik Herne, Utrecht Early Music Festival, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Festival Cervantino Guanajuato, Festival Interceltique de Lorient, Zagreb Summer Evenings Festival, Split Summer Festival, Montalbâne International Festival of Medieval Music, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival, Belfast Festival at Queen’s, etc.
She is currently working on a large-scale performance project featuring her own arrangements and original compositions and is due to workshop the piece with graduate students of Contemporary Dance and of Traditional Music at the Irish World Academy, UL.
Caitríona is a grateful recipient of funding from the Arts Council and Fingal County Council Arts Office.
“Much of Caitríona O’Leary’s work is rooted in scholarship as well as performance.... O’Leary has seamlessly set words – echoing de Ledrede’s challenge to his priests to find suitable tunes for his verses... Already a remarkable achievement in itself...But that extra step – forming Anakronos and re-arranging the songs accordingly makes ‘The Red Book of Ossory’ a work of singular genius.” ArtMuseLondon.com
“As always, it is the voice of Caitríona O’Leary that captivates and captures the listener immediately.... the instrumentalists are at their best and the result is truly overwhelming” Toccata Alte Musik Aktuell
"Caitríona transcends the Thou Shalt Nots...[her] voice is flexible, versatile and very wide-ranging in its expressive quality. She clearly shows a real understanding of the needs of this music. It’s taken a couple of generations for performers to get a handle on the Ars Subtilior composers but it’s finally happening. And to think she’s taken from that to bring it into this world is absolutely extraordinary... [‘The Red Book of Ossory’ is] one of the best abums I’ve heard this year” Bernard Clarke, RTÉ Lyric fm “In the Blue of the Night”