Name: Kieran Quinn
County: Sligo
Sport: Football
Business: Pianist
KIERAN Quinn is a Sligo footballer with a degree in psychology and philosophy. Going by that, though, you’d never guess his occupation in a million years.
Kieran is a professional musician. A pianist, to be more precise, and he plays a range of music but most often jazz and blues.
He makes a living teaching piano in Sligo and is a member of two groups: ‘The Odd Couple” - a jazz trio who gig mainly in Sligo and “Cold Slot” - the blues group with which he tours Ireland.
“I came out of college but didn’t really have much interest in making a living out of my degree so I saw an ad for music college. It was the only thing jumping out at me as something I would be interested in doing full-time.
I could always play a bit of piano but I mainly taught myself and I decided I was young enough to give it a go and if it didn’t work out, I could try something different.”
If you think there’s no typical week for someone who mainly plies his trade by night, you’d be wrong however.
During the week, Kieran teaches from three to seven each day. Before that, he gets in a couple of hours practice, eager to achieve musical excellence rather than simply get by off the back of his talents.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday, he plays gigs with his groups and during the summer wedding season, he’s booked up with solo performances as a back-ground performer.
For two corner stones of Irish culture, music and sport aren’t exactly synonymous with one another. “Yeah, I’d definitely be a bit of a novelty in both camps,” he says. “You don’t get too many intercounty footballers in the music scene and you definitely don’t have a load of professional musicians playing football. There’s very little overlap there all right.”
Still, the life of a full-time musician and footballer can have its downsides. Quinn finds himself turning down an awful lot of work so it doesn’t infringe on football and he reckons he’ll probably see it take off a bit more when he’s done with top-flight football.
That said, he’s had managers sympathetic to his cause which has helped him keep both going strong. He’s also been blessed with the strength of the music scene in Sligo. Kieran lived for a spell in Dublin but found himself missing the jazz-scene in back home.And though that Connacht medal last year was undoubtedly the highlight of his career so far, events from the music part of his life have ranked alongside.
“We play at the Sligo jazz festival every year and last year I played with Michael Buckley - Ireland’s leading sax player. Then with the trio, we ended up jamming with a couple of members of the Buena Vista Social club after they were around for a gig so I’ve been lucky enough to play with a couple of really good musicians.”