Growing up in the village of Ventry just west of the picturesque harbor town of Dingle in County Kerry, Ireland, Rachel Holstead was surrounded by a rugged beauty that has to this day influenced her work as a composer. The idea of place — and the impact the landscape and cultural heritage of a place can have on the people who live there — is a theme Holstead has explored not only in her music, but also in her life. 

Holstead began composing at the age of 14 at the encouragement of her parents, who were both music enthusiasts. “I was very lucky with the situation I had growing up, ” Holstead explains. “My mother was a piano teacher, and Kerry was an area very rich in traditional Irish music.” As a teenager, Holstead played violin in a local youth orchestra and spent her spare time making up music on a fiddle. Her evolution as a composer unfolded from there.  “My mom suggested I write it [the music] down, and I did. The director of my youth orchestra heard it and wanted to use it,” Holstead recounts.

Early on, Holstead’s compositions focused on the traditional music she had grown up with. “I took this music and put it in a slightly more classical context,” she elaborates. As she went on to study music — she holds a B.A. in Music from Dublin’s Trinity College and a PhD in Composition from Queen’s University in Belfast — she began exploring many different styles, including electroacoustic music, collaboration, and ethnic instruments.

Lately, Holstead has found her work circling back to where it began. Take, for example, Thar an bhfarraige gheal (Over Bright Sea), a piece for voice, fiddle, seven strings, and electronic media that has strong connections to the Dingle Peninsula. Holstead went back home two years ago to write the piece, which was commissioned by Moving on Music with funds from the Lottery Fund at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. “I keep coming back to this piece in my head,” she says. “The whole experience of creating it affected the way I work, and has continued to affect me in so many ways.”

Holstead will present and talk about this piece — and the role the landscape of the Dingle area played in its creation — as part of her MacDowell Downtown presentation on October 7th.  Place also played a role in her decision to apply for a Fellowship at The MacDowell Colony. “The combination of MacDowell being located in a such a beautiful part of the country and the time and space it offers for artists made me want to come here.” Holstead will be an artist-in-residence for six weeks at MacDowell, where she will be working on a piece for string orchestra commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra for performance in 2006.