Dr. Conor Linehan

Conor Linehan is a pianist, composer and teacher based in Dublin.  He joined the piano faculty of the RIAM in 2008. A hugely versatile musician who works in a variety of art forms, he is comfortable within a wide range of styles and has performed a vast solo and concerto repertoire from baroque music to contemporary premiéres. He has also regularly taught modules in improvisation at the RIAM. He has been a regular soloist with Ireland’s major orchestras in repertoire by composers as eclectic as Igor Stravinsky, jazz composer Ronan Guilfoyle, traditional Irish composer Mícheál Ó’ Súilleabháin, rock band Radiohead and tango master Astor Piazzola.

Recent performances include a 2023 Irish Tour with renowned soprano Claudia Boyle and trumpeter Niall O’Sullivan as part of Music Network’s touring programme. They performed an eclectic programme ranging from Handel and Mozart to Kurt  Weill and Astor Piazzola. His recording of Mícheál Ó’Súilleabháin’s Oíche Nollaig, with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Gavin Maloney, was broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on Christmas Eve, 2023. Conor also toured Ireland with the WhistleBlast Quartet, performing with them his own arrangement of Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, for Piano, Violin, Clarinet and French Horn. Other appearances included a performance of Ronan Guilfoyle’s Suite Rath Crúachán for piano, clarinet and jazz guitar at the Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin (alongside a performance of Claude Debussy’s Estampes).

 Over a long career, he has performed throughout Ireland as well as in London, New York, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bonn and throughout the United States. He has been broadcast on RTÉ Lyric FM regularly, as well as on BBC Radio 3 and RTHK in Hong Kong. He has premiered Irish composer Ronan Guilfoyle’s Piano Concerto with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra under Laurent Wagner and, later, with the National Symphony of Ireland under Colman Pearce. He recorded the premiere of American composer Don Ray’s Piano Concerto for the Albany Label with the Filarmonica Bulgarica and conductor Derek Gleeson in Sofia. 

In 2009. he toured the United States with the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Colman Pearce and Derek Gleeson, in concertos by Beethoven and Shostakovich. In 2016 Conor gave a recital of music relating to the 1916 Rising in Dublin, at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, New York. In 2017 he performed his adaptation of Schubert’s Winterreise for the theatre production ‘Woyzeck in Winter’. His performance at the Barbican Theatre in London was praised for its ‘sensitve and resourceful pianism’ by Rupert Christiansen in the London Daily Telegraph. His  2015 piano adaptation, for Coiscéim Dance Theatre Company, of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, in which he performed live, toured throughout Ireland and Britain, as well as to the Sydney Opera House.

In 2018 Conor was Musician in Residence for the Dublin borough of Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown As well as composing three pieces for violin and piano, as part of this residency Conor performed Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin in a version choreographed and danced  by the great dancer Emma O’Kane, who passed away in 2021.

In tandem with his career as a pianist, Conor is a celebrated composer of music for the theatre and for the concert hall. His piano piece Intermezzo was the most widely performed commissioned piece at the 2018 Dublin International Piano Competition. His 2015 piece, Roadshow, was commissioned by the renowned British pianist Joanna MacGregor, for her tour of Ireland that year. He has also written pieces for Irish National Opera (The Patient Woman, 2020), Music Network (An Autumn Night’s Dream, for cello quartet, 2020) and The West Wicklow Festival (Diva, for violin and piano, 2023). His 2005 Concerto for Piano and Jazz Ensemble was performed by pianist Thérèse Fahy and the RIAM Jazz Ensemble in Dublin and Merkin Hall, New York.

Conor has written theatre scores for all the major Irish theatre companies, as well as The Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre in London. He has been five-times nominated for Irish Theatre Awards, winning on two occasions in 2010 and 2023. 

Conor studied piano with Thérèse Fahy at the RIAM and, in London, with the renowned German teacher Peter Feuchtwanger. He holds a Doctorate in Music performance from Trinity College Dublin. His doctoral thesis explored orchestrations of French piano music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Conor’s students at the RIAM have been prize winners at the Dublin Feis Ceoil, the Henle Beethoven competition and the annual RIAM scholarships. He has also curated a graded syllabus of contemporary Irish piano music for the Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin.Conor has been on the piano faculty of the RIAM since 2008.