Board of Directors

The Contemporary Music Centre is governed by a board of directors with the overall management of the centre being carried out by the Executive Director. CMC’s Board of Directors maintains close contact with the executive and energetically contributes to the centre’s strategic development. The board of directors encompasses a range of skills and expertise, legal, professional composition, music promotion & community music, third-level music education, professional performance, film production and academia. Given CMC’s all-Ireland remit and ethos, board members are based in different regions of the island of Ireland. The CMC board ensures organisational and operational excellence, with the sustainability and continual development of staffing, governance, building, financial matters and resources to achieve the centre’s goals.

Paula Mc Hugh (Chairperson)

Appointed 23/04/2020

Paula McHugh (BMus LTCL PCGE MA) is an experienced Arts Manager with a background in music, and a particular interest in education, outreach and engagement activity. Having previously worked for the Ulster Orchestra, and as Manager of the Ulster Youth Orchestra, Paula followed her interest in commissioning and promoting new music working for Moving on Music. While at MOM she established the Night Music series in partnership with BMS and CMC; promoted the first performance by the Hard Rain Ensemble; programmed performances and workshops by the JACK Quartet; and managed Beyond the March a project involving marching bands in the creation and performance of new music by composers Brian Irvine and Sid Peacock. In 2014 Paula was appointed as Arts in Health Manager in Belfast Health and Social Trust managing a range creative programmes for patients, service users, staff and visitors across hospital sites and social care settings.

Dr Niamh NicGhabhann

Appointed 28/01/2021

Niamh NicGhabhann is Assistant Dean, Research (Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences), and Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Limerick. Following her BA and PhD at Trinity College Dublin, she was the founding course director of the MA Festive Arts Programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Her research focuses on Irish art and architecture, as well as aspects of cultural policy, festivals and festivity. She is currently the chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance.

Nora Hickey M’Sichili

Appointed 26/07/2021

As Director of the Centre Culturel Irlandais since 2013, Nora Hickey M’Sichili is a central figure in the Irish arts scene, supporting artists to develop their practice and acting as a cultural ambassador for Ireland representing the country’s artists in an international context. In January 2021 she published a strategic plan with ambitions for the capital development of the Centre. She began her career as Curator in the Hunt Museum in Limerick (2000-2004) and was hugely instrumental in the Museum winning the Museum of the Year award in 2003. Four years later she became one of the founding curators of the Glucksman in University College Cork. She took up the role of Director of Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, where she expanded Mermaid’s artistic programme with a series of commissions, co-productions and festivals. She is currently Chair of FICEP, le Forum des Instituts Culturels Etrangers à Paris, which represents the 58 international arts centres based in Paris, and a board member of the Contemporary Music Centre, Ireland, as well as a Patron of the Beckett International Foundation, UK. As well as programming and commissioning music, she studied classical singing for ten years, sang in chamber choirs such as Trinity Singers and recently studied Gregorian chant in the University of Limerick.

Terry Blain

Appointed 11/08/2022

Terry Blain was born in Belfast and educated at Coleraine Academical Institution, N. Ireland, where he acquired a love of choral singing. He holds degrees from Cambridge University, Queen’s University, Belfast and the University of Leeds. For the past 30 years he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, covering mainly classical and contemporary music, but also theatre, music theatre, dance and literature. Terry writes regularly for BBC Music Magazine and Apple Music, and has also contributed to Opera magazine, Irish Theatre Magazine, Culture Northern Ireland, BBC Radio Ulster, the Belfast Telegraph and other publications. He recently returned from a seven-year period in the United States, where he was classical correspondent for the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis, and wrote for Classical Minnesota Public Radio.

Nick Roth

Appointed 11/08/2022

Nick Roth is a saxophonist, composer, producer and educator.

His work seeks the liberation of improvisation from composition, the poetic syntax of philosophical enquiry, and the function of music as translative epistemology.

A curious predisposition and a steadfast refusal to accept the existence of boundaries between the real and the imaginary has led to collaborations with an array of international performers, composers, choreographers, visual artists, poets, sculptors, directors, festivals and ensembles.

Often engaging in conversation with scientists from such diverse fields as mathematical biology, astrophysics, forest canopy ecology, orchidology, quantum loop gravity or hydrology, his work is an investigation into how we can come to know through the art of music.

Simultaneously subsumed by an insatiable appetite for literature, many of his compositions explore the symbiotic resonance of language as sound and symbol.

He is artistic director of the Yurodny Ensemble, a founding member of the Water Project, and a partner at Diatribe Records, Ireland’s leading independent record label for new music.

He has served as artist-in-residence at institutions including the European Space Agency (ESTEC), California Academy of Sciences (CalAcademy), dlr LexIcon, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (CCI), and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).

His work is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre and supported by Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Music Network is funded by the Arts Council.