Ronan Guilfoyle is the Director of the Centre for Jazz Performance Studies in DCU, is an associate Artist of the Royal Academy of Music in London and is a member of Áosdana. He is a major figure on the Irish jazz scene and has developed an international reputation as a performer, teacher and composer. His groups have toured widely internationally and he has also recorded extensively, including the award-winning “Devsirme” in 1997. As a composer, he specialises in compositions which feature both improvised and written music and has a large body of work that ranges from solo piano pieces, to chamber works, to orchestral compositions.
He has undertaken extensive research in the field of advanced rhythmic techniques for jazz improvisation, and his book, “Creative Rhythmic Concepts for Jazz Improvisation”, is now seen as a standard text for this area. As part of this research, Ronan has worked extensively with Indian musicians and institutions such as the Karnataka College of Percussion in Bangalore, and the Brhaddvani Institute in Chennai. He has developed music that incorporates Carnatic music and jazz techniques, and in 2001 he undertook the ‘5 Cities’ project, composing a large-scale composition for a septet of Irish and Indian musicians. ‘5 Cities’ was supported by the ICCR and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, toured in India and Ireland, and was the subject of an RTE documentary.