Feargal King was born in County Galway in the West of Ireland, the country where he spent the first half of his life, the eldest of five children. He studied Musicology at University College Cork, from which he graduated with honors in 1990. After a year of residential study at the Irish Institute of Pastoral Liturgy, he received a Diploma in Sacramental Liturgy cum laude in 1993. That summer he also received a green card, and emigrated to the United States where he has resided ever since.
Feargal began composing liturgical music in the mid-1980s as a student in Cork. While there he became involved as a music catechist at the Knockadoon Folk Liturgy Summer Course, an annual event for the formation of teens involved in liturgical music. Many of his best known early works were composed for Knockadoon, where their accessibility and melodic color made them a big hit with the young people of that time. But America was calling …
Some months after arriving in the US, Feargal began working as a parish director of music and liturgy in Southern Oregon. After four years getting his feet wet, he moved to Illinois, where he worked in music at both parish (two of them) and diocesan level for the next 22 years. In the meantime, a number of his songs were published by World Library Publications (now a subdivision of GIA Publications), and he also made his music available through his own former imprint, Kingsfold Music Productions. In collaboration with long-time musical partner Breda Barry, three CD Collections were produced during this time: ‘Sacred Gateways’ (1999), ‘Incarnate’ (2002) and ‘You Are The Vine’ (2014), all available on this website.
Feargal has a long association with the Liturgical Composers Forum, with whom he serves as website admin, and is also the site designer and website admin for ‘As Music Heals’, a fund to help church musicians who have been affected by the COVID-19 epidemic.
He is also a longtime music catechist for the ‘One Bread, One Cup’ conferences for youth involved in liturgy at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, where he has continued this ministry begun in Ireland so long ago.
Feargal now lives north of Baltimore MD with his wife LeShawn, and a lionhead rabbit named DK. He serves as Director of Music at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Aberdeen, MD. This website represents a return to and a reclaiming of his creativity and compositional ministry after a long desert hiatus of the soul.
Feargal is grateful for any value, inspiration or beauty he can bring to the lives of others by making his music available through this website for others to sing.
