Oliver Hynes holds BA, DipMusTeach and BMus (Hons) degrees from University College Dublin and an MSc (Hons) in educational management from Trinity College Dublin. He studied piano, organ and composition at the Dublin College of Music and taught in his native Carlow before joining the Department of Education and Science as a senior inspector of music. He has been active in the Association of Irish Composers, Dublin’s Feis Ceoil, and in many choral groups as singer, conductor and adjudicator.
As a composer he has written masses and other church music, and settings of contemporary Irish poetry including Cathal Ó Searcaigh’s Fothrach tí i Mín na Craoibhe which was awarded the Sean Ó Riada Memorial Trophy at the 1999 Cork International Choral Festival. He has also written arrangements of Irish folk-songs for children’s choirs and for voice and harp. Rising, for soprano, choir and orchestra, was commissioned by the Lawlor Foundation in Tullow, Co. Carlow, to commemorate the bicentenary of the 1798 Uprising.
