International and local acts for Galway Early Music Festival

Galway’s own Cois Cladaigh Chamber Choir will be among the attractions in this year’s Galway Early Music Festival which will take place next weekend, May 17-20.

Cois Cladaigh, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is a perfect act for the Early Music Festival, as it specialises in European music from the late 15th and early 16th centuries, while also performing a formidable repertoire of contemporary choral music.

The choir’s Galway concert, on Thursday next, May 17, will feature “a mixture of church and non-church music – music from the church and from the house”, according to its director, Brendan O’Connor. “There will be Italian, English, a bit of French and a bit of Spanish thrown in.”Cois Cladaigh has a very busy programme lined up for the year, with a lot done and more to do, according to its director.

In February the group performed a free city concert under guest director Donal Doherty from Derry. It has also hosted visiting choirs from Dublin and Derry, while last weekend members travelled to Cork for that city’s International Choral Festival. Later this summer the choir will embark on a tour of Clare Island, Inishbofin and Inis Oírr. There will also be appearances at Galway Arts Festival and Galway Jazz Festival.

Cois Cladaigh boasts 42 members on a good night, according to Brendan, explaining that most members are local, there are also people who come from Athlone, Limerick, Ennis, Roscommon Town, Ballyhaunis and Westport. The group rehearses from 8-10pm one night a week, and then socialise afterwards.

“We have a very faithful group of people and because they have been together from such a long time, they have a wide repertoire, so we’ll be able to get it to the stage pretty quickly,” he says of the Early Music Festival concert.

Some of the church songs that will be aired in Galway were performed in Cork last weekend, when Cois Cladaigh took part in a Mass during the International Choral Festival.

Last November the choir was invited to perform at President Higgins’ inauguration in Dublin Castle and as a result of that, has been invited to sing at the International Day of Commemoration, also in Dublin Castle on July 8, to mark the contribution of Irish men and women who have died in past wars and on peacekeeping missions. Also in July, to mark Dublin’s nomination as European City of Science, Brendan will combine his love of science and music, when he will lecture during the day and then lead Cois Cladaigh at night in a collaborative music event with American vulcanologist John Delaney, harpist Kathleen Loughnane and piper Eugene Lamb.

But next up for the choir is the Early Music Festival with its theme of Social Harmony: When Tradition and High Art Meet, something Cois Cladaigh’s programme will embrace.

French musician Francois Lazarevitch will continue the theme with 1000 years of Bagpipe in France on Friday, May 18 at 1pm in The Chapel of the Poor Clares. That musical extravaganza will showcase the bagpipe in all its diversity and outline the role it has played in France’s musical and cultural heritage.

Other musical highlights include Les Musicians de Saint Julien and Francois Lazarevitch as they perform Le Berger Poet / The Shepherd Poet at St Nicholas Collegiate Church at 8.30pm. This will feature a selection of French pastoral music of the 18 century and intimate pieces for flute, musette and hurdy-gurdy.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.