Terry Moylan started learning the pipes with Leo Rowsome in 1968.
He became a member of Na Píobairí Uilleann the same year and has served on the committee of NPU since 1971. He is also one of the founding members of the Folk Music Society of Ireland in 1971 and has been on several occasions a member of the board the Irish Traditional Music Archive. Along with his wife and friends, he started a record label, Craft Records, to issue no-frills recordings of traditional music and song. Starting with the Johnny O’Leary CD, they have gone on to publish two CDs of the Cork band The Four-Star Trio, and another of Songs of 1798. Their most recent publication is The Spoons Murder — a collection of humorous songs by the Cork musician and singer Con Ó Drisceoil.
In 1981 Ceol an Phíobaire, his edition of tunes notated from the playing of pipers was published by NPU. The second edition of this was published in 2013.
In 1982 he co-founded Brooks Academy, the set-dance club based at NPU’s premises in Dublin and has taught a weekly dance class there since then. Since 1984 he has taught set dancing at the Willie Clancy Summer School and has travelled to England, France, Germany, Denmark and the USA, to conduct set-dance workshops. He has established an online journal of Irish dance, The Dance Journal, at www.setdance.com. This is a location for the publication of serious research in Irish dance, and for the re-publication of archival material. He has published three collections of set-dances collected from traditional sources, Irish Dances –The Pipers’ Set & Other Dances (1985) and The Quadrilles & Other Sets (1988).
He has delivered talks on the subject of dance to the Willie Clancy Summer School, the Folk Music Society of Ireland, the Dublin Folk School, University College Dublin, the University of Limerick and Ireland House, NYU. Through Brooks Academy, he has also been responsible for the first-ever printed manuals for Irish set-dancing, the first ever recordings of music specifically arranged for set-dancing, and the first ever manual for the traditional Irish solo step-dances—A Selection of Irish Traditional Step Dances by Michael Tubridy.
In 1994 his edition of Kerry box-player Johnny O’Leary’s repertoire Johnny O’Leary of Sliabh Luachra – Dance Music from the Cork-Kerry Border was published by the Lilliput Press and in 1996 he published a CD collection of O’Leary’s music to accompany the printed collection. The second edition of the printed collection will be published in late 2014. In June 2000, Lilliput Press, in association with the Goilín Singers Club, published The Age of Revolution – 1776 to 1815 in the Irish Song Tradition, his survey of political song and music in Ireland from the American Revolution to the Battle of Waterloo.
He was a consultant in the publication of Fintan Vallely’s Companion to Irish Music, and a traditional music consultant in the publication of The Encyclopaedia of Ireland and in 1996 he co-edited with NPU chairman Seán Potts The Man and his Music, an anthology of the writings of Breandán Breathnach.