Aidan Murphy is a Dublin musician, sound engineer, arranger and teacher. He has worked in Irish music since the late 1990s. Kolo Sound Design is his company.
Engineering
Aidan mixed sound for theatre and musicals from 2006 to 2011 at the National Concert Hall, the Helix, Draíocht, Axis, the Mill Theatre and the Mermaid Arts Centre. He returned to full-time engineering in 2022. Since then he has mixed dozens of school and amateur musicals, worked engagements at the Abbey Theatre in 2024, and held recurring work with One Louder Sound and TheatreWorx.
Arranging
Aidan has written arrangements since 2003 under the name Bamboo Music Arranging, a strand that now continues within Kolo. He founded and directed The Bamboo Sessions, pairing Irish singer-songwriters with a live string quartet from 2007 to 2009, and the series finished at the National Concert Hall. Before that he arranged and produced for the Global Funk Orchestra, a twenty-plus-piece Dublin funk band that recorded for Rubyworks and played twenty-five nights at the Olympia Theatre. He wrote string quartet parts for Vyvienne Long in 2013.
Live events
From 2011 to 2017 Aidan ran The Monday Echo, a weekly songwriter and poetry showcase at the International Bar, and Slam Sunday, a monthly poetry slam. Across those years he ran more than 250 live arts events as booker, host and engineer. In 2019 he hosted and stage-managed the poetry slam on the Spoken Word Stage at Glastonbury Festival.
Teaching
Aidan taught flute, piano and guitar at the Dublin School of Music and the Lucan School of Music from 2011 to 2019. With Music Generation Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown he ran ukulele and beatboxing workshops in primary schools from 2018 to 2021, and for three years he ran weekly Soundbeam sessions at Carmona School in Glenageary, a special school. He has coached rock bands with Rockjam since 2018.
Performance
Aidan performs as Thunderclap Murphy, improvising ambient music live in libraries, galleries and retreats.
If any of this maps onto work you need done, email info@kolosounddesign.com and Aidan will come back within the week.