Local Faces: Vincent Kennedy

Accomplished musical composer and conductor Vincent Kennedy has written for many orchestral, chamber, symphonic and brass bands and his music has been performed by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Band of An Garda Siochána and many bands across the globe.

Currently living in Firhouse, Vincent continues to compose music for various local, national and international orchestras and bands.

“I have a saying that I write music to enhance people’s lives – and I take my inspiration from different things like a honey-bee taking nectar from all the different flowers to make the honey,” Vincent tells The Echo.

Growing up in a small cottage on Marlborough Road in Donnybrook, Vincent says he remembers a specific moment at aged three when he knew he had a deep connection with music.

“In our room there was a wardrobe and there was a radio on it and in the morning time my mother used to come into our room and turn on the radio to wake us up. I distinctly remember when I was three this piece of music coming on and it just went through me.

“I didn’t know until I was 15 what that piece of music was – it was a scherzo from Beethoven 7 symphony. I was very conscious of the fact that I was hearing tunes that I hadn’t heard anywhere else, and I wanted to be a composer.”

Vincent went on to learn music and join a band at CBS Westland Row, taking up the trumpet as his instrument of choice inspired by his cousins’ husband who was in the Sands Showband at the time.

“I started learning music there on the recorder and because of this cousin, when they asked me what instrument I wanted to play I didn’t know anything other than the trumpet, so I said, ‘I’ll play the trumpet.’

“We seemed to be an exceptional group at the time because we just took to music. We got very good very quickly. We played any type of music – classical, jazz and a lot of music that came from America such as pop tunes and rock tunes.”

At aged 12, Vincent joined the National Youth Orchestra and by age 15, he had won the Feis Ceoil in both the under 18’s and over 18’s categories with his band.

“We really didn’t know how good we were and when we won the national band championships. I still remember us coming out to play and it was a packed hall in Dun Laoghaire, and you could hear sniggers that these kids were coming up to play and then when we started playing you could hear this audible gasp.”

At aged 19, Vincent was offered a position in the National Symphony Orchestra before embarking on a wide range of achievements in his career to date such as winning the RTÉ music prize for his piece ‘Soliloquy and March’.

He is a member of the Association of Irish Composers and a founding member of the Irish Film and Television Academy as well as the Musical director of the Rathfarnham Concert Band Society.

Speaking about his biggest achievements in his life and career, Vincent says to still be alive and getting to this point in his life, is one of them, after having some difficult moments – faced with illness in the past as well as his children.

“Musically, there are many achievements. Performing my music in America and Sydney was great, performing in the National Concert Hall every time is fantastic – I love it. I did two shows in The Civic Theatre, and they were really important to be at home and the people there are lovely, and we had great support.”

Committed to the education of music in young people, Vincent says there is “huge value” in learning a musical instrument for children from an early age and he is a firm believer every child should have the opportunity to experience all the different forms of art.

“I think it is very important that any child has exposure to music and sport, ballet and art – the whole lot. There has been a change over the years and the world has become a more visual place, we are all now looking at phones or a screen.

“The young people that I have seen stick it – it does a couple of things. From an early age it makes you time efficient because you have to set aside a certain amount of time to do this and in later life whether you go on to be a professional or not it is a great way of making friends.

“I believe that composers are born and not made. I have no training as a composer, but I think I learned more from playing than if I had gone and studied it from books, because when you are in the middle of an orchestra and a band you can feel it.

Citing the John Keats poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, Vincent says he resonates with the ‘unheard melodies’ that Keats writes about, which has always come naturally to him until Covid-19 and lockdown began to have an effect as he resided at home.

“I hear the unheard melodies and I write them down and for most of my life that has been easy but when Covid came, it was as if a dark cloud was over my head and nothing would come out – I couldn’t write.

“Then, I got a commission to write a piece of music for The Irish Association of Youth Orchestras and they wanted me to write a piece of music that could be played by everybody from the very beginner and youngest player to the almost professional player.

“I describe writing as if I had to physically go and walk down into a mine everyday and hack away at the stones and get these nuggets, put them into a wheelbarrow and wheel them all the way back up and break them open to find these little nuggets of notes to write.

I worked for three weeks on that and I broke through then and since then I have been working.”

Currently working on a piece for the 1500-year celebration of St Colmcille in Donegal for an orchestra and choir and soloists as well as a commission from South Dublin County Council for the anniversary of the Rathfarnham Concert Band, Vincent is kept busy and very much in demand for his talents and un-teachable skills as a composer and conductor.

“I am obviously one of the great composers because all of the great composers are only heard of when they start to decompose,” Vincent jokes.