Raising the musical bar
Lifestyle - It’s 17 years since Romanian group ConTempo became Galway’s quartet in residence and 25 years since they first formed while at university in Bucharest. Their personal and professional lives are closely linked by marriage, but they find spaces in their togetherness and relish the sense of community they’ve found in Galway, as they tell JUDY MURPHY.
What Adrian Mantu and Ingrid Nicola of the ConTempo Quartet recall most clearly about their arrival in Galway 17 years ago to take up the position of Musicians in Residence for the city and county, was the warm welcome they received.
The four young musicians – Adrian’s wife Andreea Banciu and Ingrid’s husband Bogdan Sofei complete the group – had formed ConTempo eight years previously when they were studying at the University of Music in Romania’s capital, Bucharest. They mark 25 years in existence this year, 17 of those spent living in Ireland.
After graduating from college, they studied and worked in other places, including in Madrid and London.
“And we thought, maybe London will become home or maybe Madrid will become home, but then we came to Galway,” recalls Adrian.
He plays cello with ConTempo while Andreea plays viola. Bogdan is the quartet’s lead violinist and Ingrid is second violinist.
“It was beautiful, the welcome we got,” says Ingrid. “And reassuring that this was a place we could call home and have a family.”
They recall that “Galway was not so cosmopolitan” back then. That’s Ingrid’s memory. Adrian laughs as he recalls it being constantly described as ‘Europe’s fastest growing city’. The scope was there, he says wryly.
Both couples settled in Roscahill on the Galway side of Oughterard and now have two children each, ranging from 13 to eight years. Both mention the quality of the education and cosmopolitan make-up of the local schools while Adrian, whose mother now lives with him and Andreea, also points to the air quality.
The four members of ConTempo grew up in Romania and their various paths to music were shaped by the repressive communist regime under which they lived until the violent fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.
“The only way you could express yourself and not jeopardise the family was to do arts, especially music,” says Adrian who came from a family who opposed communism while trying to get on with life.
Ingrid agrees. Unlike her three ConTempo colleagues, who went to musical schools from the start, she went to regular school first and learned violin privately. Her parents – an engineer and a teacher who never compelled her to do anything – sat her down in her early teens and told the talented young violinist she needed to think about her career.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.