Belinda O'Hooley

Professional career

O'Hooley comes from a long line of County Sligo musicians and performed alongside her cousin Tommy Fleming, a singer who was formerly with De Danann.

Rachel Unthank and the Winterset

From 2004 until 2008 she was a member of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset (now The Unthanks). Nic Oliver, reviewing their 2007 album The Bairns for musicOMH, described O'Hooley as "the ace in the pack throughout The Bairns. Her background in cabaret (intriguingly, she had once appeared on Stars In Their Eyes impersonating Annie Lennox) adds a left-field edge to the music, with her jazzy piano chords lending a sing-along feel to the live favourite Blue's Gaen Oot O'The Fashion. O'Hooley also contributes the two original tracks to the album, although the casual listener could quite easily mistake both Blackbird and Whitehorn for traditional songs".

Solo album

In 2005 O'Hooley released a solo album, Music is My Silence, described by reviewer David Kidman of Netrhythms.co.uk as "a commanding and defiant set of thoroughly contemporary-sounding songs" and by FATEA as "a highly polished collection of songs that gently sway between folk and jazz".

O'Hooley & Tidow

She has issued five albums with Heidi Tidow, performing as O'Hooley & Tidow. Their 2016 album, Shadows, was given a five-starred review by Robin Denselow in The Guardian and three of their other albums have received four-starred reviews in the British national press.

Other musical contributions

O'Hooley played piano on Jackie Oates' albums Jackie Oates (2006), The Violet Hour (2008), Hyperboreans (2009), Saturnine (2011) and Lullabies (2013). With Heidi Tidow, she was also featured on Chumbawamba's album ABCDEFG (2010) and DVD Going, Going (2012), Lucy Ward's debut album Adelphi Has to Fly (2011) and Patsy Matheson's Domino Girls (2014).

O'Hooley & Tidow were amongst the musicians on the album The Ballads of Child Migration: Songs for Britain's Child Migrants, released by Delphonic Records in October 2015. They contributed the music for one song on the album, "Why Did I Leave Thee?"

O'Hooley also accompanied Nic Jones at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on his 2011 comeback tour and on further tours in 2012 and 2013. In 2015 O'Hooley accompanied Jim Boyes on his Sensations of a Wound tour, telling a little-known story of the First World War. An album of this music, Sensations of a Wound: The Long, Long Trail of Robert Riby Boyes, was released on the No Masters label in February 2015.