On tonight’s programme, 30 years of the Irish Youth Choir, and recordings and interviews from the inaugural tour of the Irish Youth Chamber Choir, entitled Messengers, which took place this year. Vincent Woods’s guests are Greg Beardsell, artistic director of the Irish Youth Choir; opera singers Robin Tritschler and Mairéad Buicke and singer and musician Julie Feeney, all former members of the choir; and current members, Helen O’Donoghue, Miriam Kehoe, Robbie Blake and Eoin Grealis, interviewed during the Irish Youth Chamber Choir’s rehearsals at St Peter’s Church in Portlaoise while on tour in April.

Music heard on the programme: from Data Est Mihi Omnes Potestas, by James MacMillan; Beannachtaí an Mháthair, by Greg Scanlon; Battle of Jericho, by Moses Hogan, all performed by the Irish Youth Chamber Choir and conducted by Greg Beardsell; and an extract from Purcell's My Heart is Inditing, performed by the Irish Youth Choir with the Cork School of Music Baroque Ensemble, conducted by Geoffrey Spratt.

The Youth Choir’s annual residential week takes place in June in Limerick. For more information about the choir and updates on forthcoming concerts -- Cork on 30 June, Dublin on 1 July and Kilkenny on 11 August -- see www.aoic.ie

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Vincent Woods

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