The latest Tuning Up project brought live brass music into schools in Mallow, Macroom, Youghal, Innishannon and as far west as Goleen.

The five members of Artemis Brass went down a storm again. Jo Ann O’Connor, one of the teachers at St Mary’s Secondary School, Mallow said, ” What impressed the students most was the french horn/hose pipe demo, getting to stick their heads in the tuba and getting to sing along to a song near the end. We’d love to have them back!”

Mary Anne Collins of Goleen NS said, “We were delighted with the workshop. It was fantastic. The children thoroughly enjoyed it. It was interactive and engaging and the musicians were wonderful. Thank you!”

Students from schools in Bandon, Mitchelstown, Mallow, Dunmanway, Macroom, Crookstown, Ballineen and Kerry Pike look forward to the Irish Guitar Quartet’s workshops next week.

Tuning Up is part of Cork County Council’s Arts in Schools Programme and is organised and managed by West Cork Music. It is part funded by the Arts Council.

We are delighted to announce that the 13th West Cork Chamber Music Young Composers’ Competition is now open for entries.

We welcome submissions from all Irish and Irish-resident composers under 35. Past judges of this competition include Donnacha Dennehy, Lera Auerbach, Brett Dean and Andrea Tarrodi. The adjudicator for the 2020 Competition will be the great Irish composer, Deirdre Gribbin ( right).

Past winners of the Competition include Seán Doherty (whose most recent work ‘I am the World’ was commissioned by the European Federation for Choral Music), Solfa Carlile and Amanda Feery, (both winners of the Seán Ó Riada competition), Robert Coleman (NCH Jerome Hynes competition winner) and Finola Merivale (a Dean’s Fellow at Columbia University). Congratulations again to the 2019 winners, James May, Robin Haigh, inti figgis-vizueta and Timothy Doyle.

This competition is generously supported by IMRO.

Find out more here.

Cork Orchestral Society presents three concerts before the end of the month.

This evening (Thursday 14 November) at 7.30pm in Aula Maxima,  UCC, the Navarra Quartet will perform music by  Schubert, Janáček, Turina and Puccini, plus two sublime works from the acclaimed contemporary Hungarian composer György Kurtág.

On Saturday 16 November at 1.10pm in the Curtis Auditorium, CIT Cork School of Music, you can join the CSM Symphony Orchestra for their first concert of the season in this delightful lunchtime programme featuring the fireworks of Malcolm Arnold and the pastoral fumes of Gustav Holst. At the heart of the programme lies Edward Elgar’s beloved Cello Concerto featuring one of the leading young cellists to emerge from Ireland in recent years.

On Thursday 28 November at 7.30pm in the Curtis Auditorium, CIT Cork School of Music,

Cork’s own Mairéad Hickey (above), one of Ireland’s most accomplished and well-loved violinists, joins Belfast-born Michael McHale, one of its leading pianists, for a programme of sublime works for piano and violin by Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Debussy.

Find out more here.

Please note – these are not West Cork Music concerts.