Artists:Fiona Molloy

Fiona Molloy was born and raised in Derry, Northern Ireland. She started playing piano and “…singing entire songs before I could talk!” Fiona started her musical studies under the tutelage of her grandmother Martha McGuinness (nee McDaid), a voice and piano teacher, and her father John Molloy, a classically trained baritone. At about the age of 12, she went on to train with Derry’s famous vocal coach James McCafferty (The Little Gaelic Singers), winning many commendations and medals in both voice and piano at local and national feis’ (cultural competitions) all over Ireland. In her mid-teens, Fiona began classical voice training with Neil Carlin (retired Opera Singer, Vienna Opera), a regimen she credits with “allowing me to be 45 years old and still singing 4 hours at a stretch alone”.

Around 16 years of age, Fiona discovered guitar, joined the Thornhill College Folk Group, and began studying stage technique with Tony Johnson, Eurovision Song Contest Winner Dana’s vocal coach. “I finally knew what I wanted to do”. Talent shows and local concerts were soon added to the young singer’s experience.

In 1975, with the continuing “troubles” in her native province of Ulster, Fiona was approached by local city councilor Danny Feeney and the Peace Women of Derry, who asked her to sing at a local Peace Rally. At the famous rally on the Craigavon Bridge, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan of the Northern Ireland’s Peace People asked Fiona to join them as the movement’s singer, to represent the youth of Northern Ireland.

For the next 18 months, the young Derry girl traveled with them throughout Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales, singing at rallies and conventions and appearing on television and in newspapers. In Germany, while on the Peace Rally Circuit, Fiona entertained German Dignitary Anna-Marie Renker at the Bundestaag in Bonn… the only singer ever to do so. Fiona, “Derry’s Songbird of Peace” (Daily Mirror, London) traveled to Norway with the delegation on the Peace People to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. When the rallies ended with a huge finale at Trafalgar Square in London, onstage with folk legend Joan Baez, Fiona sang before a crowd of 200,000 people. In the singer’s own words, “It is a part of my life that I feel someone else must have lived.”

Staying in London in the months following the end of the Peace Rallies found her contracted to a major recording label, who promptly dropped her when their main London office was bombed. Northern Ireland was never far away! Hansa, a German record company, signed the young singer and recorded the “Peace Song” (as it had become known) on their label. A stab at London’s theatre district landed her the job of 2nd understudy to Elaine Page of the original cast of Evita, a job she lost within weeks for not being a British Actor’s Equity Member.

Discouraged, the young singer returned home to Northern Ireland where her aunt from America was visiting. Suggesting that her niece return with her to the U.S.A. until the fall college semester would begin, Fiona left Shannon Airport for JFK, New York. “I never looked back,” she said. “Stepping off the plane in New York City on July 31st, 1977, I knew that this was where I wanted to be for the rest of my life!”

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