"I'm completely obsessed with finding the easiest way to describe what happens in a voice. I'll never get there. That's why I'm still doing it."
Irene was singing before she could speak in sentences, the youngest in a family where music wasn't a hobby, it was the air everyone breathed. Her parents performed as the folk duo Des & Kay, and all three of their children became singers and musicians. For Irene, the question of how the voice actually works started early, and never really left her alone.
She spent years performing, concerts, weddings, a long run of musical theatre from Sweeney Todd to Les Misérables, before teaching pulled her in. Not as a backup plan, but as the place where her real curiosity lived. What fascinated her wasn't the performance itself, but what was happening underneath it: the mechanics, the freedom, the moment a voice stops fighting itself and starts working with the singer.
That curiosity took her to international voice teacher Andres Martorell in 2012, and she's been deepening her understanding ever since. Now an IVA certified voice teacher, Irish Regional Director for MVT (Modern Vocal Training), and a tutor at the International College of Musical Theatre in Belfast. But credentials were never the point. They're just what happens when you stay obsessed with a question for long enough.