Mick Moloney

Professor Michael “Mick” Moloney

Global Distinguished Professor, New York University

Personal website

Mick Moloney, who currently teaches at New York University in the Department of Music and the Irish Studies Program at Glucksman Ireland House, combines the careers of professional musician, musicologist, folklorist, teacher, lecturer and arts presenter and advocate. He is an accomplished singer as well as an instrum­entalist and possesses a vast storehouse of songs and instrumental pieces from the Irish and Irish-American tradition. He is the author of Far From the Shamrock Shore: the story of Irish American history through song published by Random House in 2002 with an accompanying CD on Shanachie Records. He has also written many articles for academic journals and specialized collections of essays in the fields of folklore, musicology and popular culture. He holds a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught ethnomusicology, folklore and Irish studies courses at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Boston College and Villanova University. For the past five years he has directed The Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, the only Irish music ensemble in any university in the U.S.A.

He has recorded and produced over fifty albums of traditional music, written scores of liner notes for assorted recordings and acted as advisor for festivals and concerts all over America during the past thirty years. He has hosted three nationally syndicated folk music series on American Public Television; was a consultant, performer and interviewee on the Irish Television special Bringing It All Back Home, a participant, consultant and music arranger of the PBS documentary film, Out of Ireland and a music researcher and performer on the 1998 PBS special The Irish in America: Long Journey Home. In 1999 he was awarded the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts – the highest official honor a traditional artist can receive in the United States.

He has developed a particular specialty in American popular music from the pre 1925 acoustic era. He has amassed one of the world’s great collections of recorded sound, sheet music and visual images from this era that acts as a resource for many of his research projects. This collection is now housed in the NYU Bobst Library. He passionately believes that knowledge, arcane and otherwise, should be communicated in a variety of ways both inside and outside academic institutions particularly by its integration into performance in innovative ways that can make the learning process accessible and enjoyable as well as challenging. In addition to sharing knowledge and expertise through printed material and in musical performances he has given hundreds of public lectures over the years sponsored by universities, colleges and cultural organizations all across America.

He currently serves on the advisory board to the Library of Congress in planning the Library’s first ever Irish American music and social history exhibit planned for 2007. He is also interested in international travel particularly in Southeast Asia and is currently working on major research projects in the area of tourism, heritage and human rights in Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.