BORN in Riverstown, Co. Sligo, Michael Bowles was educated at Belvedere College in Dublin. In 1932 he joined the Army School of Music and in 1936 obtained a BMus at University College Dublin. He trained as a conductor under Colonel Fritz Brasé in the Army School of Music and joined Radio Éireann as the conductor of its orchestra in January 1941, becoming the station's first full-time director of music the following year. He resigned from the army in 1942.

During his directorship, Bowles constantly emphasised the importance of music-making in Ireland. He succeeded in persuading Radio Éireann to sponsor a series of fortnightly public symphony concerts, the success of which established the tradition of regular weekly concerts which is continued to this day by the National Symphony Orchestra. Bowles also conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Orchestra during the early 1940s and, in 1943, established the twentyfour- voice Cór Radio Éireann.

Bowles's contribution to contemporary music in Ireland is considerable. As music director of RTÉ he broadcast programmes of vocal and instrumental music under the title 'Contemporary Irish Composers'. His live concerts often included contemporary music, both Irish and international. His own compositions include music for choir, orchestra and -- those of which he was most proud -- solo voice.

He left Radio Éireann in 1948 and moved to New Zealand, where he conducted the National Orchestra of New Zealand. In 1954 he moved to the US to take up a professorship in Indiana University and become the conductor of the Indianapolis Philharmonic Society. He returned to Ireland in 1970 and established a guest house in West Cork with his wife, Kathleen, to whom he was married for over fifty years. He passed the latter period of his life in Co. Wicklow and later in Dublin, where he died.

Maria Smyth

Comdt Joseph J. Ryan adds a personal appreciation:

It was in the National Concert Hall just some two weeks before his passing that I last met Michael Bowles. There was nothing then in his demeanor to suggest that he was not long for this world. He was his usual comfortable self, happy to discuss matters musical. This is how many will remember Michael. It is precisely such humanity that friends will treasure. Along with his wife, Kathleen, he was a gracious host and together they retained a generosity of spirit through the joys and trials of a varied and nomadic life. They had also seemed to me to be such a good pairing and perhaps following Kathleen's death in 1997, it should not have been a surprise to see Michael depart so soon.

Michael was something of a Renaissance man in an age inimical to such a disparate approach. As a musical polymath he defied categorisation: conductor, administrator, teacher, collector and advocate for traditional music, each was the central focus for a period. His role in the consolidation and development of the Radio Éireann Symphony Orchestra has not been properly recognised and the current celebration marking the orchestra's fiftieth year is surely a case of revisionism gone mad. It may take some time, but history will furnish a more complete account of Bowles's contribution, particularly in the late 1930s and early 1940s.