The Team
Who We Are
Danny Dineen
Managing Director
Senior music therapist
B.Ed. M.A.M.T. N.M.T. M.Sc.C.S.
086 340 54 34
Starting out my career as a primary school teacher, I worked for five years in mainstream classrooms and with children with special educational needs in small group settings as a support teacher. During this time, I was part of a team who co-ordinated a very successful school choir (performing with Cork Symphony Orchestra on multiple occasions as well as with such notable singers as Katherine Jenkins and the late Cara O’Sullivan), personally set up an extra-curricular music club (Club Ceol) and used music as a teaching tool on a regular basis. During this time, I was also a musician, gigging regularly around Cork, Ireland and occasionally abroad.
​
After teaching for five years, I discovered the profession of music therapy and took a career break to upskill by completing the Masters in Music Therapy at the University of Limerick, followed by a Masters in Cognitive Science at University College Dublin. With my newly found knowledge, I knew what I had to do. I handed in my notice and set up Munster Music Therapy.
I still occasionally perform as a live entertainer (Danny Dineen Musician) and as an original music artist (Danny and the Aos Dána), singing and playing the songs I love so much, and I believe I always will as playing music is simply what I love to do!
​
Munster Music Therapy is taking up more and more of my time every week however as it grows and grows! Reaching more people both in my local community, Ireland as a whole and more recently across the wider world!
​
What I believe makes Munster Music Therapy different is our unique experience, focus on integrating into a wide variety of multi-disciplinary teams, the structure of assessment and reporting and our passion for sharing knowledge.
This is a result both of my teaching experience and my experience training as a cognitive scientist in UCD. The unique insight provided by cognitive science, integrating systems science and the multi-disciplinary approaches used to study brain and the mind, allows us to better understand the needs of different organizations, their missions, and their teams, as well as our service users. This in turn allows us to better communicate what it is that we do and how we can best help our service users and the teams that work with them in a way that is easy to understand and specifically tailored to the culture and bureaucracy of each stakeholder and organization.
We provide a clear pathway for organizations to seamlessly integrate music therapy into their care programmes and our methods of assessment and reporting clearly explain the potential reach and the limitations of music therapy in a way that contributes to the success of the organizations that we work with and our collective service users.
"What I believe makes Munster Music Therapy different is our unique experience and ability to integrate into a wide variety of multi-disciplinary teams"
We also work closely with private individual clients and families, helping service users to flourish and educating parents, carers and other stakeholders, empowering them to continue music therapy at home with tools developed and refined in our clinical sessions.
​
Finally, we believe in the power of music therapy to unite people and communities and we are working hard at developing the field in all its potential areas. We have recently become official industrial partners with the University of Rioja in Spain, providing mutual educational and development opportunities to develop and grow. I have presented talks at conferences, published in a peer reviewed journal, my work has been used as an example of best practice in books. I hope to be able to fund our own research into developing new music therapy approaches, applications, and techniques in the future! We believe that a rising tide lifts all boats and that the brightest years in the wonderful field of music therapy are still ahead of us!
Jaime Gallardo
Music Therapist
B.Mus. M.A.M.T.
The use of music in a therapeutic context is the key to achieving goals that seemed impossible.
085 1438492
While studying Music History and Science at the Autonomous University of Madrid in my final year I discovered Music Therapy. I could not believe what I was seeing, music had always been my medicine and now I could use it to help others. Undoubtedly, deep inside me I knew that I was born for this job. I enrolled in the master's degree and before I started I called all the centres that offered music therapy to work as a volunteer.
I needed to feel and learn from the side of a professional what this work, which at first sight seemed quite magical, was all about. My requests were listened to and before I had my end of year trip I had an interview at the school of Music and Disability in which they trusted in my abilities, even though I still didn't have any degree or experience in this sector, but they wanted to trust me.
​
Before starting the master's degree I had already had experience in several day centres with very severe disabilities with an amazing music therapist. Being in a new situation, with my guitar and in a room where people were in great pain, without any experience I felt in my place, comfortable, confident and I could understand them.
Thus began my adventure in this exciting profession. At the same time, I continued studying, working in these projects with special needs and I started my internship in the hospital field in children's ICU, neonates, oncology and transplants. This is probably the happiest moment of my life. I was devoting all my energy to this profession and I felt that I was born for this.
​
Later I participated in different projects, always working with children, teenagers and adults with special needs mainly Autism, Down Syndrome etc...
I also did my thesis at the Hospital Universitario de la Paz about how Rock and Roll benefits the activation of children hospitalised in transplants. I was working with other populations such as adults with anxiety or family therapies at risk of social exclusion.