Category Archives: Concerts

Blow the Dust

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Great week working with people who don't get to play their instruments very often. Carolyn Goodwin, John O'Brien and myself were the tutors for the event. The Blow the Dust was an event put on by the Cork Opera House. It is a great way to get back into playing a neglected instrument. We arranged music specially for the ensemble, which included trumpets, sax's, drums, guitar, mandolin, violins, cello, euphonium, tuba, keyboard, piano, flute and clarinet. The programme which included He's a Pirate, Besame Mucho, Milonga by Piazolla, Everybody loves Saturday night and Moonlight Serenade, was a challenge to play (and to arrange!) but in the final concert the dust had certainly blown off and the audience were left feeling uplifted and happy! Here are some photos of the event.

Rehearsing

Concert in Millenium hall at the Cork City Hall

I even blew the dust off my violin!

Quiet Music Ensemble

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Lovely concert in Dublin at the NCH (National Concert Hall) We played five commissioned pieces by Irish/Irish based composers. An intense day of rehearsals to go through each piece with the composers, gave a short lecture, and then the performance. It is always interesting and challenging to perform new works! We also played our own free improvisation which was way out and spacy!

Click here to read the review

City of Cork Symphony Orchestra

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Fantastic concert at the Opera House last week, including the young Mairead Hickey playing Tchaikovsky violin concerto. 

 " The Opera House attracted a big crowd for A Russian Evening with Tchaikovsky, a performance by the City of Cork Symphony Orchestra. The genial enthusiastic conductor Keith Pascoe has welded this orchestra into a cohesive, sometimes brilliant unit and the quality of the playing was superb". Irish Examiner

glitzed up and ready to go!

backstage preparations

meanwhile…upthebackpaddock

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My brother in law John Plankenhorn is a composer living in Australia, and my trio Ozmosis comissioned a piece from him. He wrote meanwhile… as a series of six vignettes to be placed between pieces in the concert, like a little aside… they were very tricky to rehearse although most under a minute… have a listen!

 

Ozmosis Concert

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OZmoSiS is a new ensemble that I formed with two other expat Australians living in Ireland.
We performed at the Cork School of Music and during the concert I played the premiere of an original work Blow by Blow

An Australian blow fly trapped in the window, the buzz, the irritation, the reminder of what is beyond the window
a reminder of what it is to be free, feelings of being being trapped, so near yet so far.
Working towards your goals blow by blow, a journey where there are all the elements of being a blowfly trapped, released
coming up against the invisible wall time and time again but still persevering,
still heading towards the light, the promise of freedom.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SaRFPU77Tk’]

Dido and Aeneas

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Having a great time preparing for this. Don’t miss!

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I8aF_75Kq4′]

Cork Opera House presents
Cara O’Sullivan Majella Cullagh Mary Hegarty in Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell

Directed by John O’Brien

Arranged by and featuring Marja Gaynor (strings)
with Carolyn Goodwin (winds), Ilse De Ziah (strings) & Piia Pakarinen (accordian)

And with Brendan Collins as Aeneas

Choreography by Inma Moya Pavon
Costume Design by Lisa Zagone
Set Design by John O’Brien
Lighting Design by Michael Hurley

For the very first time Cork’s International Stars Cara O’Sullivan, Majella Cullagh and Mary Hegarty will perform on the operatic stage together in Henry Purcell’s exquisite masterpiece Dido and Aeneas.

The 1689 Baroque work is given a stunning new arrangement involving elements of jazz, gypsy and tango and is set in a fantastical gothic world.

This one-hour opera, based on the Roman poet Virgil’s tragic story of Queen Dido and her Trojan lover, Aeneas, was one of the first operas written and performed in English.

In this new production, each of the four singers also plays their principal character’s subconscious other self – a concept which heightens the emotional and sexual tension created by the passion of hidden desires.

The new orchestration will be created by Baroque and contemporary music specialist and violinist, Marja Gaynor for a quartet of multi-instrumentalist musicians.

Dido and Aeneas offers a top-quality, not to be missed artistic experience for adults and an engaging introduction to opera for teenage audiences.

Performance Schedule
Tues 8 Feb – 8pm
Wed 9 Feb – 8pm
Thurs 10 Feb – 1.30pm & 9pm

Tickets: €20
Concession Tickets Available: €15
School Group Tickets: €12
Limited Early Bird €15 Tickets Available

Tipperary Song for Peace Competition

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I played in the Song for Peace competition in Tipperary at The Simon Ryan Theatre, Excel Centre Tipperary. and we came a close second… but won the best Irish song.  Norman Pratt wrote the song and John Daly, Caroline Fraher and myself performed it. Take a look!

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz5nCqcXkXY’]

City of Cork Symphony Orchestra

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We played a wonderful concert in the Cork City Hall on Thursday. Always a joy to play with Kieth Pasco who played Mendelssohn violin concerto and conducted The Dvorak New World Symphony. Brass players from England joined us to beef up the numbers, and it was wonderful to lead a cello section who completely committed to playing the music in a musical and vibrant manner. Here is a review.

“Few audience members, who remember the concerts given by Cork Symphony Orchestra under its founding conductor Aloys Fleischmann, could imagine the musical treat that was to come at the initial concert given by the re-named City of Cork Symphony Orchestra. It is now officially sponsored by the office of the Lord Mayor, and Cork City Council.

Prior to the concert, the Lord Mayor Cllr Dara Murphy unveiled a plaque in the foyer of the Cork City Hall marking this official city recognition, an important development in the cultural life of the city.

Even the whirlwind performance of Mozart’s overture to the Marriage of Figaro, under the CCSO’s conductor Keith Pascoe, gave little hint of what was to follow, good as it was. Pascoe handed the baton to oboist/conducting student at CIT School of Music, Michael Craig while he took up his violin to perform Mendelssohn’s beloved Violin Concerto. Craig’s accompanying, and the orchestra’s sensitive support, allowed Pascoe’s intensely musical, deeply personal, and wonderfully moving account of the concerto to match, at times even surpass, the playing of the best international soloists it has been my pleasure to hear.

He then returned to the podium to direct a performance of Dvorak’s New World Symphony that must have been as good as any given by an amateur orchestra”. Irish Examiner 24 April 2010