Thirty years hitting right note with audiences

Music is magic when it’s live. It’s as fragile as a sports match when you don’t know what’s going to happen next,” says Jane O’Leary, who has been responsible for bringing some of the best classical performers in the world to Galway in the last 30 years.

American-born Jane and German-born Erika Casey were the driving force behind the group Music for Galway, set up in 1980, which aimed to create new opportunities for people in Galway to enjoy live music performances.

Both came to Galway via the then UCG – Erika’s husband Tim was German professor at the university, while Jane’s husband Pat, whom she had met in America, had also secured a job lecturing there.Since the 1970s Jane has been a major part of the West’s cultural life. Indeed, her influence extends further afield as she has also served on the Arts Council, the board of the National Concert Hall, Ireland’s Cultural Relations Committee and the country’s Contemporary Music Centre.

Jane also founded the modern music group Concorde and has been awarded for her work throughout the years by being nominated to Aosdána, the body set up by the Arts Council in 1981 to recognise artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland, and to help these people focus on their arts.

And for 30 years, she has been at the artistic helm of Music for Galway which has seen international figures including Yehudi Menuhin, Nigel Kennedy and Emma Kirkby perform in Galway, as well as rising Irish talent such as pianist Finghin Collins, who is returning for the 30th celebrations.

From the beginning UCG had a major role to play in the development of Music for Galway with the university’s Buildings Officer Gerry Lee being on its board.

“The first thing we did was buy the piano,” says Jane, casting her mind back to the group’s early days. She is referring to the Steinway grand piano which has been used by performers since the beginning.“We said that we couldn’t run concerts unless we had a good piano, a piano that any musician in the world would be happy to play. Gerry Lee asked me what was the best piano available and I said ‘a Steinway’. Erika said ‘from Hamburg’.”

For Jane a Steinway from Hamburg would have been the perfect instrument, but she felt it was way outside the budget of this fledgling society. However, her concerns were groundless.

“Gerry said ‘that’s what we are going to get’, and within six months we had raised the money locally. It cost £15,000 and is worth €80,000 now.”

That was 1981. The Aula Maxima in UCG’s Quadrangle had just been done up and was an ideal location. Because of the strong connection between UCG and the Music for Galway founders, it became the natural home for this grand piano. The instrument was lifted in there by six strong men and that’s where it still sits.

Shortly after that, Music for Galway formed a company and as it enters its fourth decade the group is still going strong, although life is not without its challenges.

“The audiences were bigger in the first year than they are now,” says Jane. “It’s actually harder now [to get audiences], maybe because there’s too much going on and maybe people are too comfortable.”Galway was a very different place in the mid 1970s, she says, and while the city wasn’t as developed as it is now, it was an ideal environment in which to set up a new group promoting classical music.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.