“Do I contradict myself?” Walt Whitman famously asked. “I contain multitudes!”

Renowned composer, producer and arranger Bill Whelan has worked extensively in theatre, film and television. The Limerick native has produced and arranged for Irish rock legends U2, Van Morrison, the Dubliners, Richard Harris and Kate Bush. He boasts an impressive resume beginning with his position as composer to the W. B. Yeats International Theatre Festival at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1989. With an extensive theatrical career, his adaptation of HMS Pinafore received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination. His compositional work in film includes Dancing at Lughnasa, Some Mother’s Son and Lamb. “The Seville Suite” was commissioned for Expo ’92 in Seville and “The Spirit of Mayo” followed in 1993. “The Connemara Suite,” a trilogy of pieces written for chamber orchestra, premiered at Carnegie Hall in March 2005. Shortly after the world stopped to take notice of his work in Riverdance, Bill was honored with the 1997 Grammy Award for “Best Musical Show Album” for his Riverdance record. Bill is on the boards of Berklee School of Music in Boston, University of Limerick, the recently established music education body Music Generation, and was recently one of the first two artists to be inducted into the new IMRO (Irish Music Rights Organisation) Academy. He is currently hard at work on a new theatre project, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center in New York.

The leader and founder of The Chieftains, six-time Grammy-winners and the world’s most popular Irish traditional music group, grew up in Donnycarney, Co. Dublin and inherited his love of music from his parents. His first instrument was a plastic tin whistle. He later graduated to the uilleann pipes learning to play from the great pipe master Leo Rowsome. The Chieftains will tour exclusively in the U.S. in 2011. In the near future Paddy will link up for a whistle and flute duet with astronaut Cady Coleman who took one of Paddy’s whistles with her to the International Space Station.