Judith Mok, the renowned soprano, author and vocal coach who lived in Dublin for over two decades, has died. Born in the Netherlands after the war to Jewish parents, she graduated from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague at a young age and went on to dazzle audiences in some of the world’s most famous opera houses.
Her esteem as a vocal coach drew her into work with Whitney Houston, Grace Jones, Thom Yorke and many leading stars of the Irish music industry. Her brilliant memoir, The State of Dark, reinstated the history of a family from her perspective as a second-generation survivor of the Holocaust. Of her early life Judith said “We had no family. There were a lot of friends and artists around us but my parents’ families had been erased in a number of camps.”
Judith, who spoke seven languages, had an unshakeable faith in art. She was widely admired for her intellect, her legendary sass and her astonishing talent for friendship. Announcing the sad news of her passing, Judith’s publisher, Antony Farrell of Lilliput Press, confirmed that Judith “died on the morning of Monday 26th [November 2024] with her husband, writer Michael O’Loughlin, keeping vigil. She was a doughty soul and personality, who bore her cancer fearlessly.” The hearts of her many friends are with Michael at this tragic time and with Michael and Judith’s beloved daughter, the writer and musician Saar O’Loughlin. Judith will be remembered as a true luminary of the arts. Suaimheas sioraí dá hanam.
Michael Cronin
Judith Mok was special. Poetry, song, prose; no genre was a stranger to her multiplying talents. A prodigiously gifted linguist, Judith was on reading terms with vast swathes of literature in the original languages and meeting her was always to get a glimpse of the vanished hinterland of a high-minded, liberal, cosmopolitan Europe. Her incisive intelligence and puckish humour made her the best of company and her writings – in their unflinching honesty – will always be there to remind us of how much we will miss her.
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Emer Martin
Judith Mok was a Monstre Sacre, she didn’t just look at you, she pierced through to your core with an unravelling gaze that was at once threatening, and playful. She and her husband, Michael O Loughlin, were poets in the ancient way – in the way that only poetry matters. That life is held by poetry and the world has to be spoken and sung into being.
Walking through the woods in the Dublin mountains with the faithful Kumo at her heels, and her daughter Saar on horseback, Judith would be singing, and Michael telling stories. They threw legendary parties where you could be sitting between a famous writer, a rock star, and a hopeful new artist from last night’s book launch.
I remember Shane MacGowan on the sofa cackling as Judith spun around declaring, ‘look at how fit I am. Aren’t I in great shape?’ She was not like any woman I knew, she had no insecurities. Because of this the Irish often didn’t understand Judith or know what to make of her. She knew her worth and she didn’t give a fiddler’s about hiding it. She was a great poet, a classical singer and a teacher. And she was a great friend.
The many mega-famous rock stars she coached sought her out, because in a world of sycophants, she expected excellence and with her imperious, irreverent manner, demanded of all who came before her – you are an artist and that is sacred, so reach beyond your limits and be better than you imagine you can be. She taught us all so much.
My favourite memory: It was 3am at Féile Na Laoch, Judith Mok on a cold summer’s night in Cúil Aodha was on stage, she sang a lament in Ladino, the language of her Sephardic Jewish people. Fully in her power, her voice was an incantation, the huge crowd stood reverent and utterly silent, the dark field had become a holy place. Now Judith is gone. Do we even know what we have lost?
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Judith Mok’s death is a blow to all of us. Life in Ireland was illuminated by the presence of such an artist of multiple talents and international reach, while her range as poet, musician, teacher shaded into her talent for friendship and hospitality. Her confrontation with history and with the personal traumas of her family was explored at length in her acclaimed prose work, The State of Dark, published two years ago when she was already ill.
She added to the imaginative vocabulary of Irish literature and her writing resonates with the literature of ideas worldwide. Her friends will remember her as a free, determined, impatient, generous woman with a rare intellectual power.
John Banville
What I remember most vividly of Judith is her smile: the chin tucked in, the lips slightly aquiver, the eyes sparkling with delight and mischief, and that great swathe of hair fairly throbbing in the intensity of all that she was. I shall miss her keenly. There is a grain of comfort in the fact that something of her – much of her – will remain alive in her books, especially the great testament she left us in her Holocaust memoir, The State of Dark.
Clíona Ní Ríordáin
“The firmament had landed on the ground/Its stars frozen in the snow-covered fields”. When I learned that Judith Mok had died these lines from her poem about the death of her mother came back to me. She was a bright star in the European sky.
Her presence burnished the lives of her friends. Unforgettable was her wicked “heh, heh” laugh at the irony of absurd situations; her profound zest for a life lived through all art forms; her captivating singing voice which covered such a range of songs, best illustrated perhaps in her performance as Molly Bloom.
She showed such fortitude in the face of illness, an attitude inherited from her own parents, Holocaust survivors who got on with life and put hatred and adversity behind them. Her reputation as a singer was such that her literary gifts were not always recognised. I was delighted that her memoir, State of Dark, brought her talents to the attention of a whole new public.
I will remember her in the taste of liquorice, walk by her side through the haute couture section of her beloved Bon Marché, and wear the beautiful Tibetan scarf she gave me as a sign of our sisterhood.
June Caldwell
There was a vulnerability to Judith, the way she seemed to always reach for deeper connection, and I greatly appreciated that. She would say or reveal something a bit thrilling every time we met. ‘What an appalling little man!’ Her honesty was kind of sensational. When my mother died, Judith remarked that to her it was strange how Ireland allowed people to suffer, to drain to death in a sanitised setting, when euthanasia was more humane. ‘In Holland we wouldn’t let someone go through that, we’d deal with it at home’.
We were about to sit down to dinner and she’d made an elaborate artichoke dish I wasn’t sure how to eat. She loved sharing food, revealing secrets, always addressing her beloved pets from the dinner table too. She’d read absolutely everything, especially fiction in translation, and would look disappointed if you hadn’t also discovered some obscure writer she found exhilarating in that moment. I remember one of Judith’s soirées when she took me aside to show me some black & white photographs in the bedroom: family members who’d died in the second World War; her grandfather’s shawl he should’ve been buried in, lying limp on a chair. ‘Look how young these two were, in their 20s, they came for them the night of their wedding.’
I’m really glad she got to publish The State of Dark. I may not have known Judith for very long, but I’m genuinely gutted she’s gone.
Nora Hickey M’Sichili
I was fortunate to get to know Judith during her many treasured visits with Michael to the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, a place that was sporadically over the course of fifteen years a home and cultural retreat for Judith. Close to her birth country Holland, the CCI simultaneously represented Ireland, her adopted country, and France, the country she embraced from a young age; she moved as easily between the three languages with great poetic flair.
At the CCI launch of Judith’s memoirs, The State of Dark, partly written in CCI, I was struck by how Judith’s life experiences made her navigate the world in a particular way. She recently shared her distress at the current suffering in the world, even though she herself at the time was experiencing considerable pain and anxiety.
Judith was truly a force of nature, a remarkable woman, a powerhouse. She was incredibly impressive (a polyglot, a beautiful writer of prose and poetry, a magnificent singer, a mentor and vocal coach, a giver), sometimes overwhelmingly so. But at the CCI, a place where she felt at home, we saw at close hand her vulnerable, generous, giving, fragile, humorous, loving side, which we will miss enormously.
Aifric Mac Aodha
No crocodile tears for Judith Mok, no mawkish mise bocht. She was completely herself. All style, all brilliant impatience. The very best of company. When she came for lunch one day, she rang the wrong doorbell. Within minutes, a neighbour had fallen under her spell – he had never met anyone quite so riveting. He was, as I told her at the time, in Mok-shock.
In her memoir, The State of Dark, Judith talks of trying to cultivate ‘a personal, essential beauty’ as a stay against this world’s barbarism. Passion – ‘essential beauty’ – governed in Portobello Wharf, where she, Michael, and their marvellous daughter, Saar, generously welcomed others in. Yes, truly: ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.
Adam Wyeth
Yesterday, leaving Paris, I passed through Montparnasse Cemetery, where Samuel Beckett lies buried. Standing by his grave under a gunmetal sky, my wheelie luggage at my side, I reflected on how we are all just passing through. My thoughts turned to my dear friend Judith Mok, whose bohemian soul thrived in Paris before bringing her continental flair to Dublin.
Gatherings at Judith and Michael’s home felt like scenes from La Dolce Vita. Judith radiated a magnetic presence, drawing everyone in. At one party, I asked a woman what she did for a living. ‘I sing and play guitar,’ she replied modestly. ‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘Must be hard to make a living.’ The woman was Lisa Hannigan. Judith never let me live it down. Another time, I failed to recognise Hozier. Yet for all the famous faces, Judith herself was the star.
During Covid, she stepped on to her balcony to sing Delibes’ Flower Duet. It became a weekly ritual, drawing bigger crowds each time. Her voice rose like a luminous thread, flowing along the canal’s dark waters. For brief, transcendent moments, the fractured world felt whole again.
Much will be written about Judith’s brilliant work, but to me, she was an artistic kindred spirit who opened doors to new worlds. The world needs more bohemians, more artists like Judith Mok.
Enda Wyley and Peter Sirr
Judith was a friend full of surprises – a song unexpectedly bursting forth on the South Wall on a cold winter’s day, to the amusement of passersby. Or in May 2020 during Covid, she was a passionate singer entertaining crowds from her balcony on the canal in Dublin 8. Peter and I enjoyed many walks with Judith, shared lively conversations about books and writers – our friendship crossing decades. (Peter first met Judith in Amsterdam in the eighties, where Michael and Judith lived and I have known her since the mid-nineties.)
I remember travelling to Holland with her once, to do a poetry reading. Judith also sang at the Festival. She was barefoot, stood too close to a candle, her hair suddenly going on fire. A scuffle, the flames were quenched and Judith, irrepressible performer that she was, sang on, singed hair and all! One Christmas morning she came to our house and treated us to a memorable Silent Night in German. She was an artist of many languages – most specifically of music, poetry, love and friendship. Her profound memoir, The State of Dark, is an act of necessity about the impact of the Holocaust on her own family. It will endure. Sleep in heavenly peace, Judith.
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