Siobhán Armstrong is a performer, teacher, mentor, academic, and artistic director who researches and plays music from earlier centuries on reconstructions of medieval to 18th-century harps.
She plays copies of medieval, Renaissance and baroque harps including the multi-row, Italian arpa doppia; the multi-row, Spanish arpa de dos órdenes; and the Irish wire-strung cláirseach, depicted in Ireland’s national emblem. A versatile musician, she is at home playing 17th-century opera in some of the world’s opera houses— including Royal Opera House, London; Teatro Real, Madrid; Nationale Opera, Amsterdam—performing as a soloist on a Hollywood film soundtrack—MGM’s Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino—and gigging at some of the world's best-known traditional music festivals: Lorient, France; Panceltic, Ireland; and Celtic Connections, Scotland.
Siobhán was born in Dublin, graduating from Trinity College with a B.A. Mod. in Music in 1987. She directed the TCD chamber choir, was a professional choral singer in the RTE Chamber Choir, and won international prizes playing modern Irish harp. On graduation, Siobhán was invited to establish a harp class at the Schule für Musik, Theater und Tanz in Stuttgart-Sindelfingen. She also studied historical harps at the Akademie für Alte Musik in Bremen in the 1990s. Siobhán moved back to Ireland—via Sydney and London—in 1998, spending the next 13 years living in the foothills of the Comeragh mountains in county Waterford. She now divides her time between Kilkenny city and central London.
In 2003, Siobhán founded The Historical Harp Society of Ireland, the resource organisation spearheading the international revival of the early Irish harp. This instrument—strung in brass wires—declined in the eighteenth century after some 800+ years at the pinnacle of courtly, Gaelic music culture, and finally died out. For more than thirty years, Siobhán has been working with field transcriptions that survive from the end of the tradition – in the 1790s – to rediscover and teach its lost repertory, playing techniques, and aesthetic, placing herself at the confluence where ‘historical’ meets ‘traditional’. This has led to a PhD, awarded to her in 2020 (Middlesex University, London). In 2015, Siobhán located a lost historic Irish harp, and in 2016 she commissioned the first ever 3D laser scan of a musical instrument at The National Museum of Ireland.
Sharing her discoveries is now at the heart of Siobhán’s artistic and educational work. An experienced and enthusiastic teacher, she coaches beginners to professionals on historical and modern harps. She also works with instrumentalists and singers in a wide variety of European art-music repertory at conservatories and universities around Europe. In 2022, Siobhán was invited to be an Occasional Lecturer at University College Dublin, and in 2024 she was appointed Historical Harp professor at The Royal College of Music in London.
Siobhán has performed European art music at venues including the Konzerthaus in Vienna; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall; the Zankel Chamber Music Series at Carnegie Hall, NY; and at Izumi Hall in Osaka, Japan; and is invited to perform in baroque operas, sacred and chamber music with many of the leading international period-instrument ensembles and conductors in the field, recording with Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Virgin Classics, Linn, Dorian and Delphian, among others.
She works, or has worked, with some of the foremost early music soloists, directors, orchestras and historical opera companies in the world inc. Les Arts Florissants, Paris; Academy of Ancient Music and Solomon’s Knot, London; Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, and in Ireland with Irish Baroque Orchestra, Sestina and Resurgam. Playing early Irish harp, Siobhán collaborates with some of the most interesting traditional singers and instrumentalists in Ireland including Roísín Elsafty, Ronan Browne and Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde.
With her own ensemble, The Irish Consort, Siobhán has released Music, Ireland and the Sixteenth Century (Destino Classics, UK), produced with generous funding from the Arts Council Music Recording Scheme, managed by Music Network. This was one of the Irish Times’ top-five international Classical Music picks of 2021. Her duo recording with Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde, Ceolta Cruite: Songs of the 18th-century Irish Harpers, is scheduled to be released in 2025.