Schools throughout County Cork have welcomed musicians into their classrooms for the latest series of Tuning Up workshops. Tuning Up is Cork County Council’s Music in Schools programme which is managed by West Cork Music.

This season, there are five projects running from October 2019 to January 2020. In early October, the Busy Trio ( violinist Lesya Iglody, cellist Maria O’Connor and pianist Thomas Doyle) visited schools in Mallow, Glounthaune and Macroom, taking the students on an aural-visual journey through the calendar year in which they discovered the wealth of programme music which featured the jewels of the natural world.

The following week, the Lir Quartet ( violinists Siobhan Doyle & Kate Fleming, viola player Ed Creedon and cellist Sinéad O’Halloran) travelled from Castletownbere (left) to Dunmanway and on to Newcestown, taking in Ahiohill NS and Kilbonane NS along the way. These workshops presented the subject of synaesthesia, a neurological condition in which the stimulation of one sense leads involuntarily to the triggering of another sense. The students learnt about artist Jane Mackay who ‘sees’ music and they were able to see paintings based on her experience of hearing/seeing music composed by Britten and Mendelssohn.