Lecturer

Email: bernie.sherlock@tudublin.ie

Bernie Sherlock is a leading choral conductor.  She is the founder-conductor of the international award-winning chamber choir New Dublin Voices, Artistic Director of the Irish Youth Choir since 2020, guest conductor with Chamber Choir Ireland, and second conductor of EuroChoir 2021.  Bernie has won international conducting prizes in Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland (June 2024), Slovenia and Wales. Her ongoing work as an international adjudicator and director of choral workshops has taken her around Europe and to the US, Canada and China. She is a founding member of the World Choral Conducting Network, based in Germany, and a representative for Ireland on the World Choir Council.

Bernie takes special pleasure in exploring the music of living composers and has given more than 100 world premieres. New Dublin Voices is acclaimed for its innovative concert programming and its work in television, radio and recording. It has a strong record at Europe’s leading competitions, recently winning the Grand Prix and three other prizes at Cracovia Cantans 2024 in Poland. In 2023 in Arezzo, Italy, the choir won the Mixed Choir Competition and the Special Prize for programming and performance of contemporary music. In 2019 New Dublin Voices won First Prize in the Derry International Choir Festival and Third Prize in Marktoberdorf, Germany. It won First Prize for mixed choirs at the 2018 Béla Bartók International Choral Competition in Hungary, and the overall Grand Prix at the International Baltic Sea Choral Competition in Latvia in 2017. Previous awards include First Prize in Cork 2015, the Grand Prix in Arezzo 2013, the Grand Prix in Maasmechelen, Belgium 2011, and the Budapest International Choir Competition in 2009. In 2017 New Dublin Voices was the first Irish choir invited to perform at the triennial World Symposium on Choral Music.

Bernie has extensive experience directing a wide range of choirs, including the Culwick Choral Society and the Choral Society of Trinity College Dublin. She is a Lecturer in Music at the TU Dublin Conservatoire where she is conductor of the TU Chamber Choir. For twelve years she directed and taught on the annual Sing Ireland International Choral Conducting Summer School at the University of Limerick.

Bernie studied choral conducting with Ildiko Herboly-Kocsar and Peter Erdei at the Liszt Academy in Hungary, and orchestral conducting with Gerhard Markson in Dublin. Following her BA in music from Trinity College Dublin she earned Masters and Doctorate degrees in conducting from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and the Royal Irish Academy of Music/DCU respectively.