Seolta Music started from the simple idea in 2008 to make the music of Mark Armstrong available to a wider audience. Mark's career as a composer/arranger had seen him move easily between the quite different worlds of choirs, bands and orchestras where he created music for a host of projects, both live and recorded. So a website was set up with around 300 products. As a band conductor in the Irish Defence Forces for many years Mark had made arrangements of songs from opera, operetta and music theatre for guest singers in military band Gala Concerts. These pieces, along with many of those created by his colleagues still feature on the current website and have become very popular with band conductors all over the world.
Not surprisingly a unique selection of classic Irish concert band music is also carried by Seolta Music. This range features composers such as A. J. Potter, T. C. Kelly, James Bolger and Fred O'Callaghan along with contemporary arrangers such as Fergus O'Carroll and Brendan Power.
As Mark continued to work alongside Ireland's leading artists and performing groups, the website grew to include the works of other Irish composers such as Shaun Davey and Ronan Hardiman. Shaun is one of Ireland's best-known composers of extended large-scale works for orchestra, voices, and uilleann pipes such as The Brendan Voyage, Granuaile and The Pilgrim. Ronan Hardiman's music for the hit dance shows Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames and Celtic Tiger is now also featured with arrangements for fiddle/flute and piano of all the best-loved melodies from Michael Flatley's shows.
In 2015 a very fruitful partnership was developed with the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin and College Choral Series was born featuring the sheet music to accompany the choir's recordings of Irish music on the Signum label. Thanks to the talent and singular drive of the choir's director Dr. Desmond Earley, the group is now recognised as the leading collegiate ensemble in Ireland with an extensive online presence through their highly innovative videos on YouTube.
In 2023 it was decided to relaunch our website on a new platform and to expand the catalogue to include music from leading international publishers such as Hal Leonard, C. L. Barnhouse, Alfred, Faber and Editions Marc Reift.
So that brings us up to date! We are very excited to have relaunched and to grow further in our aim to bring the best possible selection of music for bands, choirs and voice not only to our many Irish customers but to our global audience.