Because music, especially traditional Irish music, is in her heart. She admits to it being a 'passion', inherited from both her parents being lovers of traditional music. Probably because they both came originally from east Galway, which has produced some of the great traditional musicians. The uileann piper Patsy Tuohey, celebrated in America through the early 1900s. One of the original ceidhli bands, The Aughrim Slopes of the late 1920s with Jack Mulkere and Paddy Kelly of Aughrim both on fiddles, and Joe Mills of Ballinasloe on accordion. More recently, the legendary accordion player Joe Burke. So it probably wasn't surprising that Niamh's mum Mary took to playing music, in her case the fiddle.
"She was always playing it while I was growing up, and though my dad Colm doesn't play anything, he loves traditional music. So it was always part of my life. I got my piano lessons from Dorly O'Sullivan, and when I went to Cross & Passion College, Music was my favourite subject." But when it came to filling out the CAO forms for the next stage of her education, it was a tossup between Music and Science. Science won.
Today Niamh works in administration in Tallaght Hospital, but she hasn't neglected the music. "I've always continued with it. I teach piano sometimes, and I'm doing a course in Irish traditional music at the moment as well. I go to sessions when I can find them, mostly as a listener." But she will join in too, with a tin whistle which she and some friends learned to play some years ago under the tutelage of Tom Horan of Brannockstown. "You can't take a piano to sessions," she smiles.
Niamh's other passion is hill-walking, an activity which she can often combine with her love of music, because the locations of many music festivals are sometimes in very scenic parts of Ireland. "There's the Frankie Kennedy Winter School near Mt Errigal in Donegal, for instance, between Christmas and New Year. It's run by Altan and is always great. And quite often the people going for the music also love the outdoors, so I get to go walking through gorgeous scenery with some lovely people."
Anyone who goes to Sunday mass in Gormanstown Church will be familiar with Niamh's music. She is one of the organists there along with the Gormanstown Choir.
She travelled after she left school. The almost obligatory year in Australia, some time in America, trips through Europe. But you have the feeling that Niamh is very much most at home in Ireland. Where there's just as much beauty as anywhere else, especially to walk through. "I'm a member of a couple of walking groups in this area, so I walk a lot through Wicklow and there are favourite places like Glendalough and Lugnaquilla. And I have found lovely places in the west, in Kerry, and on the islands."
You get from her a strong sense of a person not rushing anywhere. She says she has no major ambitions, but there are lots of things she still wants to do. "I'd like to learn more instruments, new pieces. There are different kinds of music I want to explore, jazz and other world music."
And you know that, quietly and in her own time, she will. It's in the heart.
