'Tom Fahy' was an assemblage of musicians headed by multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger and County Galway native Tom Fahy, born Quinn McCarthy (02 January 1971-19 June 2008.). Core members included Jiang Dan, Rachael Eisley, Zhang Li, Liu Kaige and Emer Mulholland, while other players were drafted for the requirements of particular pieces. Their 50+ album catalogue was the fruit of a 9-year collaboration initiated while the core members were in residence in Honolulu, Hawai'i. To each album, the members brought a myriad of musical competencies.

Jiang Dan (born Jiang Daoming), an only child, was born in Honolulu on 12 June 1971. A master stone-mason, Dan did not assume the role of chief percussionist with Tom Fahy until 1999. However, with his mother, a classically-trained pianist, Dan studied counterpoint, music theory and harmony throughout his childhood.

Rachael Eisley, (b. 17 July 1971), is the only child of Lionel William and Vera (nee Spence) Eisley. She was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, but spent her early years in Montreal, Quebec, where her father was a financier. When Eisley was four years old, her father died of a heart attack while driving in a car with his wife and daughter. After his death, her mother worked as a school teacher. In 1986, when her mother remarried, the family returned to their native St. John's.

As music was an early passion of Eisley's, Vera encouraged her daughter to experiment liberally with many instruments, and she soon developed proficiency with the guitar, keyboard, French horn and harp. Eisley cites Link Wray, Lonnie Mack and Duane Eddy as early influences on her development as a guitarist and it was chiefly as a guitarist that Eisley approached Fahy; later, emphasis was placed on her synthesizer work. Eisley was diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr virus in 2002 and was absent from the group until 2007, although she recorded her parts in-absentia. Today, Eisley lives on Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is working on a memoir of her experiences with Tom Fahy.

Zhang Li, (b. 1 September 1976), a first-generation Chinese-American, is the daughter of inventor Sammo Li (the group's 2005 album, 'Inventor!' was inspired by the life and work of Mr. Li). Upon graduation from the University of Hawai'i in 1999, where she was studying archaeology, she began her collaboration with Fahy, writing parts for bass, electric xindi, oboe, flute, zither and upright bass. Like Dan and Eisley, Li is a self-trained musician.

Liu Kaige, (b. 8 April 1968), a San Francisco native, not only played the bass cello, violin and gehu, but also served as the group's chief technologist and sound engineer. Kaige, once a renowned North Shore pipeline surfer, was introduced to Fahy through his cousin, Jiang Dan. It was Kaige that developed the group's first sound-stage in Haleiwa on Waialua Bay. There, the group, in its infancy, began to flesh out the sounds that would inform their later works.

Tom Fahy, the group's leader and chief composer, was a largely self-taught musician. Fahy died on the evening of 19 June 2008; he is interred on the island of Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay.

The group recorded from their Conception Bay studio (Bookmakers Studio West, Portugal Cove), approximately 20 minutes north of St. John's, Newfoundland; 'My Story' was their last album.

An algorithmic software application with which Fahy was able to effectively simulate the harmonics and sonic anomalies characteristic of a symphony or full orchestral arrangement with limited initial sonic input. By exploiting the principal of progressive recursion, perhaps best exemplified by the recursive phenomenon generated by two mirrors in parallel, Fahy affected a desired sonic end approximating the natural sound of several instruments without enlisting the support of an ensemble. How did it work? Following a deployment on what Fahy referred to as 'learning machines,' the software replicated each sample sound progressively, then re-pitched each of the successive sub-samples in a scalar way, effectively simulating the sonic qualities produced by a battery of instruments. Special attention was paid to the generation of acoustic variance in an effort to simulate the perceptual differences that can be discerned from one instrument to another in a traditional performance.

Fahy actively incorporated Adaptive Mimetic algorithms into his Progressive Recursion software, whereby a so-called 'learning machine' imitated a hum or randomized auditory artifact with the sonic qualities of a selected instrument. In this way, initial compositions were accomplished by humming alone; the output then underwent replication, pitching and rearrangement through PR.

The Mt. Pearl String Cabal is Donna Voight, Ed Chamberlain, Stephanie Malveaux, Tim Sweeney, Jim Rough, Larry Enterbridge, Josh Hammonds, Liz Channing, Scott Rye, Margaret Worth, Ian Adair, Jennifer Driscoll, Dag Halse, Kip Raymer, Liza Shuck, Tom Winchel, Ann Breese & Laurie Burr.