The Music of Riverdance, with Emma McPhilemy
About the Episode
Emma McPhilemey is my guest on the 10th episode of The Folk Music Podcast. Emma is the musical director of Riverdance, the wildly popular dance show that started as an interval act during the 1994 Eurovison Song Contest in Dublin. Even though she is trained as a classical saxophone player, her style is in no way restricted by the boundaries of musical genres. She is endorsed by Vandoren UK and Selmer Paris, and performs regularly throughout the UK, Europe, Australia and China as a soloist and chamber musician.
In our conversation we spoke about her role as musical director for Riverdance, how this part of the music industry works, the music of the show and many other things. We also got into a very interesting discussion about classical music. From what I can see around me, it seems like there’s a new generation of musicians coming up now that are challenging the old ideas about what it means to be a «classical musician». Very interesting to get Emma’s take on this.
Hope you enjoy this 10th episode of the show. I’m really happy to have reached the milestone and I’m really excited to see where this project might take me in the future.
Links
The Original Show, Live in Dublin 1995 (YouTube)
«The Insiders», The Riverdance Story - RTE documentary about the origin of show (YouTube)
