Julie Feeney

Composer / Singer / Producer / Musician / Songwriter / Educator / Theatre Artist

Julie Feeney wasn't born when Bob Dylan wrote She Belongs To Me. But you would be hard pushed to find a modern artist who better matches the profile of his celebrated lyric.

Self-sufficient and forward looking, Julie does not believe in doing things by half measures. Not only did the multi-tasking composer-performer from Galway sing, compose and produce the songs on her extraordinary second album, pages, she even conducted the top-flight full orchestra which performed them all in one epic 6 hour recording session at the Irish Chamber Orchestra Studio in Limerick. “It was one of the happiest days of my life,” she says, “although I needed a week to recover from it.”

Julie, who first made her mark on the international music scene by winning the Choice Music Prize (Ireland's equivalent of the Mercury Prize) with her debut album 13 songs, has made a huge leap forward with pages. A one-woman powerhouse of creative energy and technical expertise, she tackled the project in a spirit of almost mystical enquiry. She began with the words which she wrote during a process of “distillation” over a five-week spell at a remote artists' retreat in County Monaghan. Living and working in conditions of monastic isolation she gathered together her “thought streams”, which she turned into essays, then distilled into poems and finally song lyrics. “I wanted to put myself to the test,” she says. “I wanted to reach that stage where you actually come to the essence of what you're feeling. And I didn't want to have any word on the album that was superfluous.”

She then returned to her apartment in Dublin and completed the instrumental music. Starting in silence with pencil and manuscript, and often working for 24-hour stretches or longer, she spent the best part of four months composing, arranging and scoring the songs for a full orchestra. “In pop music, orchestras are generally incorporated in a certain way, she says. “I wanted to make a particular sound using an orchestra with songs that I hadn't heard before but one that I could hear in my head.” Julie's idea was to record the orchestra on its own in one day – effectively the first time she would hear her own compositions – and to let the results stand. There would be no conventional pop instruments or samples or indeed overdubs of any kind added to the original recordings - other than her voice. “I also wanted to use the instruments as if they were voices and the voices as if they were instruments intertwining in the songs,” she says.

The result is a collection of songs performed with stirring, spellbinding elegance, yet delivered with a strange, almost whimsical sense of fun. The album is peopled with characters such as the girl in Impossibly Beautiful who has no idea that people are staring at her because of her breathtaking good looks, and Mr Roving Eye Guy who manages “a holding pattern of romances” from behind the “high wall round his heart”.  Amid the swirling yet delicate orchestral backdrops, Julie sings in a haunting, lilting voice of truths distilled from deep thoughts. On the spiky Valentine's Song she sings in staccato bursts of the broken love affair of someone she knows: “Nothing you can do will ease the pain”. But a contrasting mood of  inner calm and emotional empowerment permeates the simple lyrical contours of Grace, a song of transcendental calm and spiritual enlightenment. “Just dream, you'll see,” she sings on Stay, a softly shimmering ballad, which she calls a “comfort song”.

Julie may be a dreamer, but she is also one of life's achievers. She has three Masters degrees, plays ten instruments and was a professional singer for the National Chamber Choir in Ireland for five years. She has composed scores for concert performances, contemporary dance productions and for short films. She has studied psychoanalysis and has lectured in education. She has worked as a photographic, live art and catwalk model, and as a "movement actor" in the world of contemporary dance. And, for the record, she is also an accomplished windsurfer and a kayaking enthusiast.

Julie went to university at a young age and shortly after had composed a piece for the English contemporary music ensemble, Icebreaker which was premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. She continued on to earn her startling tally of Masters Degrees, including one in Music and Media Technologies, graduating in 2002 from Trinity College Dublin. 

While singing in the National Chamber Choir, she also wrote her own songs which she performed in bars and clubs with a conventional line-up of guitar, bass and drums. But she suffered initially from an identity problem. "The people in places like Whelan's thought I was some kind of opera singer. And my classical-head friends thought I was a singer-songwriter.” Her eureka moment came when she realized that what her songs really needed were instrumentation and arrangements that drew inspiration from her classical background rather than tried to conceal it.

She embarked on a solo career with the release in Ireland of her debut album, 13 songs, in 2005. Having written, produced and sung all thirteen songs and played most of the instruments on the album herself, Julie designed the cover art-work and financed the initial costs by a succession of bank loans, setting up her own record label - mittens – in the process. The album sold over 15,000 copies in Ireland where it won the prestigious Choice Music Prize, securing Julie a deal with Sony/BMG via the now defunct Red Ink label who released the album in the UK to further widespread acclaim in 2006.

Since then Julie went on to orchestrate 13 songs for 65 piece orchestra; has had compositions commissioned and premiered by Ireland's Crash Ensemble and was commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland to orchestrate for the Ulster Orchestra. She has also conducted an orchestra in concert. She performed as a theatre artist in Paris and at the Galway Arts Festival in a “multi-disciplinary performance installation” entitled Slat and presented a radio series on RTÉ Radio 1 (Julie's extraordinarily wide-ranging playlist can be found at http://www.rte.ie/radio1/kaleidoscope/

All of which helped to inform and prepare her for the epic journey to the heart of her own artistry which informs pages. The new album was funded by Red Ink, but is now being distributed through Essential, with Julie once again taking a firm grip on the reins through her own mittens label. Having designed the artwork, which is based on a unique, hand-stitched dress sculpted from the actual pages of the musical score, Julie is planning to tour with a small (eight-piece) orchestra, putting on a show that combines songs from both her albums with elements of theatre and performance art.

“I've decided that instead of having my classical hat and then my other hats, as an artist I want to embrace each of them all as a whole,” she says. “I feel that I'm developing all the time. That's what I'm here for.”

April 2009

Earlier biog from 2006:

"My mother once gave me a little card for my birthday,
listing all my best qualities," Julie Feeney says.
"One of the things she wrote was:
'She always crosses the finishing line'."

When it comes to achieving her life goals, Julie Feeney, the composer and singer from Galway can certainly boast an impressive strike rate. She has three Masters degrees, including one in psychoanalysis, plays many instruments. She has toured and recorded all over the world as a professional choral singer for five years with the National Chamber Choir and Anuna. As a composer she has composed instrumental music for the 'Crash Ensemble', 'Icebreaker', and for the Ulster Orchestra; and she has composed electronic music for contemporary dance and theatre productions . She conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra string section in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in a concert where she orchestrated the scores. She has also worked as a model and as a performance artist. She lectured part time in music education for three years.

But the achievement which is outstanding is her single-handed success in composing, producing and releasing her own debut album, 13 songs, which won the Choice Music Prize (Ireland's equivalent of the Mercury Music Prize), and has already sold 15,000 copies on her own bat.

There have been a lot of self-help stories in recent times. But Julie really did do the whole job herself. She had no manager, no PR, no agents or shadowy figures in the background discreetly helping to plan her next move. From the very first jotting down of ideas in her "thought copy" (exercise book) for the lyrics and music, right through to the eventual sending out of the finished CDs to hundreds of reviewers and radio stations, Julie micro-managed the entire project on her own. She composed, arranged, produced and sang all thirteen songs and played most of the instruments on the album herself. She designed the cover art-work and negotiated all financial matters. And she financed the recording and manufacturing costs by a succession of bank loans, eventually setting up her own record label - mittens - named after her mother's favourite cat.

"I didn't employ a PR company," Julie says. "It was very simple, just putting the CDs into envelopes with a handwritten letter and sending them to everybody. Thankfully people seemed to really like the music! One of my albums reached a journalist at The New York Times. He opened it, also liked it and reviewed it. Then it won the Choice Music Prize, which was quite amazing."

Listening to 13 songs, it is not surprising that reactions have been so overwhelmingly positive. Julie's classical training combines with her feel for traditional Irish music and an openness to all areas of the arts, to produce music that is touched by a singular magic. Nothing can really describe the heady mixture of sounds on the album, a combination of the ethereal and the eccentric, the strictly cerebral and the deeply emotional.

"I'm passionate about music," Julie says. "Every day I eat, breathe and sleep music. There is no existence for me without it. That's my drug."

Studying at Trinity College, Dublin and at The Royal Conservatory at The Hague among others, she earned three Masters Degrees in a very short space of time, including one in Music Technology. "I went a bit nuts on the degrees and stuff," she says. "I was just on a roll, really. You have to do a thesis to get a Masters, which is 20,000 words or whatever it is. You can actually do that in quite a short time if you have the right headspace for it. When you are in that sparky place with a particular thing, that is the time to follow it."

She became a professional choral singer in the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, a job she only gave up just after she won the Choice Music Prize. She also composed her own songs, which she would perform in bars and clubs with a conventional line-up of guitar, bass and drums. But she suffered initially from an identity problem. "The people in places like Whelan's thought I was some kind of opera singer. And my classical-head friends thought I was one of those singer-songwriters. Not correct either way. It was difficult to find a niche." Her eureka moment came when she realised that what her songs really needed were instrumentation and arrangements that drew inspiration from her classical background rather than tried to conceal it. She began arranging the songs for keyboards, violin, recorder, melodica, cello, trumpet and occasional percussion. No guitar or bass required. "From that point on I didn't feel in any way insecure about what people heard. People realised that I am someone a bit different, and it's fine."

Julie continues to work a composer and orchestrator for ensembles including her self-composed song cycle for the Ulster Orchestra with which she performed solo. On her live shows she either plays solo or is accompanied by three classically trained musicians who each play several instruments. Her performance guarantees rapt attention from even the rowdiest of crowds.

Having now signed a deal for the mittens label to be licensed through Sony BMG (U.K.), Julie is looking forward to moving her career on to the big stage. "It will be great to have somebody else working on my behalf at last," Julie says. "But you know what? If I did it again, I'd do it exactly the same way. It's your name that goes on the CD. So really you're the one that is responsible for it. So it's best not to get into a situation where you're going to be blaming other people for anything you don't like. The buck stops with you. You're the person that wakes up with your own thoughts in the morning."

And make sure that you cross the finishing line.