Looking back, Dearbhla Brosnan says she can barely remember a time when she didn't aspire to become a musician. Growing up in Dublin, there was always a piano in the house. Music runs in the family - her parents met at a musical society event and her great-aunt spent a lifetime taking charge of church choirs in Limerick.

Brosnan's formal musical education began when she was seven. Her mother was unwilling "to push her" into music at an early age, and would have preferred to wait until she was 12. "But even seven was a bit late," she recalls. "A lot of people who become professionals start music when they are three or four.

"I was delighted when I heard that I had a place at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. I used to have a lesson once a week and then practice every day. It was very handy having my mother there - I could check with her when I had a problem.

"I never thought about having any another career, but in sixth year (at Loreto on the Green) I used to ask myself whether it was what I seriously wanted to do." Life, she says, revolved around the Academy and music.

"I was taking piano and cello lessons and studying theory. I also played in orchestras both in the Academy and, outside, I was involved in chamber music and from the age of 12 played in a piano trio and in various quartets.

"I loved sitting down and getting something together. The more advanced you become, the more you begin to play with other people. This introduces an important social dimension into music.

"I found that I loved playing with other people. When you're sitting down and everything is going right, you get an incredible buzz - it's almost impossible to describe it. Getting everything right doesn't happen very often, but the buzz can come even just for a split second."

After the Leaving Cert, Brosnan went to TCD to do a degree in music. "The performance courses, which are now available in the Academy, hadn't started at that stage" - it was 1988 when she was just 17.

"If I was starting all over again I'd probably take the performance course." In retrospect, though, she says "the TCD music course was a very good one and taught me a lot. I gained a good grounding and a new approach to music."

Trinity's music course, she says, emphasised analysis and composition rather than practical work. "You didn't have to be at performing standard."

Balancing an academic course with the practice necessary for a career in performance was difficult. "I was studying both the piano and the cello and they demanded hours of practice." The musical scene in Trinity, though, was a major benefit. "A crowd of us got together and reestablished the Dublin University Orchestral Society, which is still going strong. The Music Society, which has concerts every week, provided us with a good platform. The Choral Society gave me the opportunity to sing in the choir and play in its orchestra. I was also a member of College Singers."

BY the time she graduated in 1992, Brosnan had made a definite decision on her career. "What I really wanted to be was an accompanying pianist." A future as a soloist was ruled out, because it can be "a tough and lonely life. You spend more time seeing hotels than seeing your family. I knew it wasn't for me."

The main reason, though, was "because I enjoy playing with other people and, as a soloist, you don't get to do that."

She then spent two years in postgraduate study at the Royal Academy of Music in London. "It was fabulous. There were tremendous opportunities for performing and hearing other people."

At the end of first year, a job as accompanying pianist came up at the Academy. Brosnan applied and got it. "It was the job I really wanted. I spent my second year commuting weekly between Dublin and London. It was worth putting up with all the flying. I love the environment and the whole atmosphere of the Academy."

She now divides her time between the RIAM, where she works as an accompanist, and working as a freelance musician, giving recitals or working as an accompanist in entrance auditions at London's Royal Academy of Music and on summer courses in New York.

Summers for a musician can be very long. "There's no teaching and people are away so there are very few concerts or recitals."

Music is a precarious profession. "You live in dread of anything happening to your hands. You're always waiting for the phone to ring with the next bit of work."

Brosnan's advice to anyone considering a career in music is simple. "If you can think of anything else you'd like to do, do it. With music, you have to be prepared to give it 150 per cent commitment.

"You don't go into it for the money or for an easy life. You have to be absolutely sure you want to do it more than anything else in the world and be prepared to put up with the bad times as well as the good."