The Ortús Chamber Music Festival will take place from March 1st - 3rd 2019 with concerts in Cork City, Watergrasshill and Cobh. Now in its fourth year, violinist and Co-Artistic Director of the festival Mairéad Hickey tells us more…
I came up with the idea of the festival with Sinéad O’Halloran, a cellist who is also from Cork. We both had a fantastic grounding in our musical education in the CIT Cork School of Music and then left Ireland to continue our studies overseas. Ortús gives us a chance to return home and enjoy playing chamber music with Irish musicians from home and abroad, in collaboration with our international colleagues and friends. We invite some of the best musicians of our generation to bring top quality performances to Cork City and County, particularly East Cork, where there are fewer live chamber music concerts.
Another driving force was our hope that we could attract younger people to live classical concerts which might inspire a deeper interest in classical music. I feel that classical concerts provide us with an oasis, offering a chance to reconnect with ourselves and take a short break from the pressing immediacy of everyday life.
Chamber music has always been very important to me. When I was about 10 years old, Adrian Petcu, my teacher and mentor from the CIT Cork School of Music, told me that chamber music was some of the most beautiful music ever written. I discovered how true that was I have not looked back since!
I feel that classical concerts provide us with an oasis, offering a chance to reconnect with ourselves and take a short break from the pressing immediacy of everyday life.
I am personally very excited this year to be performing with some wonderful colleagues of mine who are all outstanding musicians, as well as international prizewinners - the American violinist William Hagen, English violist Timothy Ridout and cellist Ella van Poucke from the Netherlands. Michael McHale, the fantastic Irish pianist will perform in three of our concerts; also joining us will be Patrick Rafter, a top Irish violinist currently studying in Switzerland, London-based clarinettist Jessie Grimes and the uilleann piper, Fergal Breen, all the way from County Clare. We will be doing outreach work in the community and two Cork musicians who performed in last year’s festival, Ellen Jansson and Brendan Garde, will be coaching young ensembles who will also perform during the festival.
We are keen to work with Irish composers – Ortús 2019 will première No Go for string quartet and uilleann pipes by Sean Doherty from Derry, which I can’t wait to perform.
None of this would have been possible without the unconditional support of our festival friends and all of those who had faith in us – including Adrian Petcu, Francis Humphrys from West Cork Music, Christopher Marwood, Lyric FM Supporting the Arts, as well as invaluable funding from the Arts Council, Cork County Council and for the first time this year from Cork City Council.
With the 2019 festival around the corner, we are already planning for 2020!
The Ortús Chamber Music Festival runs from March 1st - 3rd 2019 - find out more here.
