Courtesy of the Artist's Site 2010.

Paul Dooley is one of the very few Irish people who play the Irish harp in its historical form and style - using a metal-strung harp, playing with the fingernails and damping unwanted string resonance with the fingertips.

Paul studied the construction of medieval Irish harps in Dublin during the early 1980s and has built several harps. He started his performing career on the metal-strung harp in 1986 and has appeared on numerous CD recordings and television soundtracks.

His repertoire consists mostly of traditional Irish dance music, including jigs and reels, some of which he has learned from recordings and printed music but mostly learned from other musicians: pipers, flute players and fiddlers. This music proves a real challenge for any type of harp and consequently hasn't been explored very much on the instrument.

Paul has also spent the past ten years working on the Robert ap Huw manuscript, the oldest collection of harp music in existence.