Greg H. Ward- Composer

Arrived in Birr in 2022, Greg Ward is the co-founder of Woodland’s Music. He shares his time between conducting, teaching music and theatre and composing. He is co-conducting Sing It! Community Choir He is also director of the Birr Young Voices Choir, facilitator of the Birr Youth Theatre group, primary-school music teacher with Music Generation Offaly and composer for silent films through his project Gargoyles and Rainbows.

Having received a BA in Musicology and MA in composition from the University of Montpellier he went on to study the D.U.M.I at the Mirail University of Toulouse, a postgraduate degree specializing in music teaching with children. He then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Music Pedagogy at the Kodaly Institute of the Liszt Academy of Music in Hungary. He was the recipient of a scholarship from the Balassi Institute in 2011.
More recently, he completed the Drama Facilitation Training Course with Youth Theatre Ireland.

He gained experience with children from 15 years of working with them in France, where he and Sophia Ward created the Kodaly-based music school Bouge et Chante in Lyon. He was also choir director of the a cappella group Atelier Polyphonique. During his time in Lyon he was director of the project “Voix-ci, Voix-là”, a national project involving intense music making and theater for children in a disadvantage primary school and neighborhood.

He also worked as a solfege teacher for the young singers of the Maitrise de la Cathedrale de Lyon. He was President of the national Kodaly Association La Voix de Kodaly en France for 8 years and regularly taught on their summer courses. He has also facilitate Kodaly-pedagogy workshops for music teachers in conservatoires throughout France, including La Philharmonie de Paris, le CNSMD (Conservatoire National Superieur Musique et Danse) in Paris and Lyon.

He has composed many musicals for children ages 8+ which have been performed in France, Belgium and Switzerland.