Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh is a composer and viola player from Ireland. A background in experimental, DIY, early & baroque, jazz & improvised music inform her practice.

In her approach to the viola, Nic Oireachtaigh enjoys to excavate the potential of the instrument as a sound producing object, alongside a more conventional melodic path. She is inspired by minimalism as an activity and sound pallet and focuses on experiential sound through the use of quietness and overdrives in live performance.

Three solo releases focus on exploring the instrument - Oreing (Fort Evil Fruit 2017), The Rounds (KRUT 2021) and Live At SonicActs (Scatter Archive 2023), while her most recent album Lux Gratis (KRAAK 2025) is a collage method assemblage of music, begun while in residence at Q-02 sonic arts lab in Brussels. It brings new compositional explorations on organ, electronics and woodwind in tandem with home-style field recordings and the more familiar viola.

An active collaborator, Nic Oireachtaigh has performed with artists Josephine Foster, Natalia Beylis, Circuit des Yeux, Rhodri Davies, David Lacey, Lori Goldston, Andrew Cheetham, Quinie, Jorge Boehringer, Anna Clock, Josh Thorpe amongst others.

She has also worked with film makers Jenny Brady The Glass Booth (2025), Adam Lewis Jacob Ecstatic _ (2023/2025) and Anne-Marie Copestake Birdsong and a bathroom (2024).

Alongside many solo performances, some group concerts of note include a specially commissioned work by Natalia Beylis called Around Here, the Birds Plant the Trees and a premier of Eliane Radigue’s Asymptote Versatile (1963-64) directed by Rhodri Davies at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2023.

In May 2022 she composed New Mountain, Reaching Plane, a surround sound piece for orchestral and gamelan musicians, commissioned by BBC Scotland’s Tectonics Festival.

In June 2026 she will present a new work for viola and tape as part of INA GRM’s Focus concert series.

She lives in Glasgow where she plays in free-improv quartet Dome Riders Dome Riders with Fritz Welch, Armin Sturm and Mike Parr Burman.

Sketches from Les Instants Chavirés by Jess Bull Anderson