Bernie Sherlock, Ireland
Bernie Sherlock is a leading choral conductor. She is founder-conductor of New Dublin Voices, Artistic Director of the Irish Youth Choirs, a former co-conductor of EuroChoir (2021), and a guest conductor with Chamber Choir Ireland. She has won international conducting prizes in Finland, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Wales, Poland and Ireland. Her work on the adjudication panels of international conducting and choral competitions and directing choral workshops takes her around Europe and to the US, Canada and China. Under Bernie, New Dublin Voices has gained critical acclaim for its innovative concert programming and its work in television, radio and recording. She takes special pleasure in exploring the music of living composers and has given more than 90 world premieres.
New Dublin Voices has won multiple prizes and Grand Prix at competitions in France, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Finland, Belgium, Spain, England, Northern Ireland, Slovenia, Latvia, Wales and Bulgaria, including most recently the Grand Prix in Poland at the 13th International Krakow Choir Festival Cracovia Cantans in 2024.
In 2023 in Arezzo, Italy, the choir won the Mixed Choir Competition and the Special Prize for programming and performance of contemporary music. Bernie has extensive experience directing a wide range of choirs, including the Culwick Choral Society and the Choral Society of Trinity College Dublin. For twelve years she directed and taught on the International Choral Conducting Summer School run by Sing Ireland. She is a founding Board-member of the World Choral Conducting Network, and a representative for Ireland on the World Choir Council. Bernie lectures at the TU Dublin Conservatoire where she directs the Masters programme in choral conducting and where she conducts the prize-winning TU Chamber Choir. After her music degree in Trinity College Dublin, Bernie studied conducting for two years in Hungary with Ildikó Herboly-Kocsár and Péter Erdei, followed by Masters and Doctorate degrees in conducting in Dublin.