Part-Time Music Teachers

Dr. Alyson Barber is an educator, composer, and traditional Irish musician. She completed a PhD in Composition at TU Dublin Conservatoire, where her doctoral research explored relationships between traditional Irish music and contemporary compositional practices. She also holds a Master of Music in Composition from the Royal Academy of Music, London. Her current research and creative practice draw on folk traditions, extended techniques, spatial music, and electronics to create distinctive sonic palettes. 

Alyson has taught modules in traditional Irish music, music theory, writing about music, and musical theatre in the Discipline of Music and Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Galway. She has also worked as a composition tutor with the National Chamber Choir of Ireland’s Music in the Classroom project and taught music theory and Kodály-based early years music education with Maoin Cheoil na Gaillimhe for ten years. 

She composes chamber, orchestral, and electronic works that have been performed by many ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, Concorde, RTÉ contempo Quartet.