Mark Dougherty

Composer and musical director Mark Dougherty was known in his native Northern Ireland as the music man of pantomimes.

Come Christmas he was often found directing operations in the Belfast Grand Opera House orchestra pit. It was not unusual for him to score several other pantomimes across Northern Ireland.

He was born on April 8, 1965 in Magherafelt, County Derry, and studied composition at Queen’s University Belfast.

His talents took him far beyond the pantomime circuit, however. For five years, he was musical director for Riverdance, touring Europe and Asia and overseeing world premieres in Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, in the presence of then Irish president Mary McAleese.

He conducted a sell-out UK tour of Les Misérables and directed the Ulster Orchestra in his own works, including The Belfast Carmen (co-written with Martin Lynch) and With One Voice, featuring a 1,000-strong choir. He conducted and played UK tours of West Side Story, 42nd Street and Cabaret, toured to 50 US cities with Celtic Thunder and premiered On Eagle’s Wing, John Anderson’s epic musical about the Scots-Irish. He also scored and produced the album of Dancing Shoes, a musical about footballer George Best, and, over a period of 26 years, worked on 32 productions with director Michael Poynor.

Affable, modest and an excellent cook, Dougherty remained endearingly low-key about his professional achievements. Outside of theatre he also worked with artists such as Van Morrison, Suzi Quatro, John Barrowman, Johnny Mathis and Don Williams.

For 14 years he was married to Rosie Turner – director of the Canterbury Festival, which commissioned the score for a large-scale community opera Promised Land, as well as for an adaptation of Sebastian Barry’s Dallas Sweetman, co-produced with Paines Plough.

Mark Dougherty passed away on December 25, 2020, aged 55. He is survived by his 92-year-old mother Vera and his brother John.