this is taken from a website

Mary O'Hara
~ Musical Voice of Ireland ~



circa 1956


"To summarise the life and times of a great artist
in a few paragraphs is often quite difficult.

The life and times of singer-harpist and writer
Mary O'Hara
probably needs the breadth of wide screen cinema
and the intimacy of a close friend
revealing their innermost thoughts
to give some idea of a truly remarkable career."

~ Jed Kearse ~
(his cover notes on CD entitled
'The Beautiful Music of MARY O'HARA')





Mary O'Hara was born in 1935, in Sligo, in the west coast of Ireland.
While still at school, she made her first national broadcast,
singing and accompanying herself on the Celtic harp.
Her reputation as a singer soon spread beyond her native Ireland.


The Edinburgh Festival, the Ed Sullivan Show, BBC television --
an instant public response rewarded her
with her own prime-time BBC television series
and her first recording contract with Decca Records all circa the mid 1950's.


At 21 years of age, she married Richard Selig, the young American poet,
then a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford Univeristy.
They moved to the USA
but he died prematurely
within 15 months of their marriage.


After her husband's death, the zest had gone out of life for Mary.
For 4 years she travelled the globe giving concerts and appearing on radio and TV.
In 1959 she made an extended and highly successful tour
of Australia and New Zealand.
Critics the world over were unanimous in their praise,
but the more success she had,
the more persistently she felt the call to the monastic life
and eventually in 1962
she entered an English Benedictine Monastery
where she remained for 12 years.


While 'away', her recordings continued to sell with great success.
When her health began to give way under the rigours of monastic life,
Mary decided to come out into the world again
and more importantly, to play publicly.


When she again resumed her singing career, after such a long absence,
history repeated itself.
After an appearance on the Russell Harty TV Show,
her impact on the public was such that
the switchboard was swamped with requests for her reappearance.
Soon after,
the first of many concert appearances
at London's Royal Festival Hall was sold out,
a resounding success that became a best-selling record.





Since then c1977, Mary O'Hara truly became an artist of international appeal,
having appeared in most of the world's major venues,
from London's Royal Albert Hall to Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall;
from New York's Carnegie Hall to Sydney's Opera House
and toured the
USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland and Europe.


She recorded 23 long-playing albums, some of them becoming best sellers
and has also written 3 best-selling books.
Her autobiography 'The Scent of the Roses', sold over a million copies!




"I am not, I think, a folk-singer as the purists understand it.
What I try to do is interpret traditional songs with the skill
and respect given to art songs,
simply by singing them with all the understanding I possess.

I still think that folk and traditional songs
are among the most beautiful,
but I also love Elizabethan lyrics and some modern poets' verses
and prose-poems, which sing to me,
so I set them to music."
~~*~~

~Mary O'Hara~





Mary O'Hara retired from performing in the early 1990s.

She says she felt a 'special relief' when she knew she was going to retire!
Being a performer requires one to practice singing and playing the harp on a daily basis,
for most of the day,
leaving little time for anything else.


She married again to a 'kindred spirit'
who happens to be a journalist, teacher and historian of some note.

She has found peace, contentment and happiness in her retirement,
~ something we all wish her ~
but we WILL miss hearing her voice!


Mary gave permission for John Misto to write a wonderful play about her life called Harp on the Willow, but the LINK appears to be no longer working.




Visit MARY O'HARA: Discography

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