It is a recital by The Galway Ensemble in Residence, Con Tempo Quartet and the RTE Vanburgh Quartet, with the following programme:
Britten Quartet No. 2 in C Opus 36
Brahms B Flat Sextet in B Flat Major Opus 18
Mendelssohn Octet in E Flat Major Opus 20

Friday 6^th July at 8pm in Rowe Street Church, Wexford

Thomas Heywood, organ

Organ Fireworks: This recital will include works by Handel, Grieg, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky

Admission: €15, €12 (concessions) & €5 (students)

Tickets are available at the door

Summer Lunchtime Concerts in St. Iberius Church, Wexford

Wednesday 11^th July at 1pm
Cáirde String Quartet
Mozart: String quartet K465 Dissonance
Schubert: String quartet no 14, D810, Death and the Maiden

Wednesday 18^th July at 1pm
Nadene Fiorentini, piano
Beethoven: Sonata no 30 in E, Op.109
Granados: The Maiden and the Nightingale
Messiaen:  Le Baiser de l’Enfant Jesus
Chopin:  Ballade No.4 in F minor

Wednesday 25^th July at 1pm Claudia Boyle, soprano and Mairéad Hurley, piano
This recital will include songs byMozart, Bellini, Verdi and Bernstein.

Admission to each lunchtime concert: €10, €7 (concessions) & €5 (students)

Tickets are available at the door.

Ensemble Avalon

Ioana-Petcu Colan: violin
Gerald Peregrine: cello
Michael McHale: piano

PROGRAMME
Beethoven: Trio in E flat, NO. 1, OP 1
Brahms: Trio No 3 in C Minor, OP 101
Piazzolla: The Four Seasons

Ensemble Avalon is an exciting new chamber group comprising some of Ireland’s finest young performing artists. Its inaugural performances in June 2006 received unanimous critical acclaim and they now embark on a concert tour of Ireland supported by Music Network under its recently implemented performance and touring award. With a diverse and attractive programme of piano trios by Beethoven, Brahms and Piazzolla this is sure to be one of the highlights of the Spring season.

This concert will be followed by supper for Friends and supporters in Wexford Arts Centre at which the 2007 programme will be officially launched.

This recital will include songs by Mozart, Schumann, Richard Strauss,Poulenc, Duparc and Turina.

Lenneke Ruiten, soprano, studied voice in the Netherlands and Bavaria and has won many prizes in European competitions. Lenneke worked with many leading European orchestras and conductors and is a regular guest performer at prestigious festivals such as the Rheingau Music Festival and the Robeco Summer Concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

Lenneke Ruiten has a wide repertoire, ranging from Bach to Henze. She has sung Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro (Munich), Elisa in Il Re Pastore (Amsterdam, Concertgebouw), Blondchen in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival), Knoxville by Samuel Barber (Netherlands Chamber Orchestra).

Finghin Collins, one of Ireland’s most successful musicians, studied in Ireland and Switzerland. He was the RTE Musician of the Future in 1994 took first prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in 1999. In 2006 he made his début with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and at the Lincoln Center in New York and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin in London.

Finghin has performed with many of the world’s top orchestras, conductors and chamber ensembles. Engagements in the 2006/07 season include performances with the RTE NSO, the Orchestra of St. Cecilia, the Chilingirian Quartet, the ConTempo Quartet, the Callino Quartet as well as two trips to South Korea. He will also make his début at the Barbican Hall in London, performing at the Mostly Mozart Festival with Manchester Camerata conducted by Douglas Boyd. As well as being Musician in Residence at South Dublin County Council, Finghin is Artist in Residence at Waterford Institute of Technology and Artistic Director of the New Ross Piano Festival.

This concert is being promoted jointly with Wexford Arts Centre

The Carducci String Quartet – a British/Irish combination – is recognised today as one of Europe’s top young string quartets. They have won prizes at no less than 6 International Chamber Music Competitions and have, most recently, been awarded the Bulldog Scholarship at Trinity College of Music.

Graduates of the top music conservatoires in Britain and Ireland, they have studied with members of many leading quartets including the Amadeus, Vanbrugh and Chilingirian. Most recently they have studied in London with Gabor Takacs and in Paris with Gyorgy Kurtag and Paul Katz of the Cleveland Quartet as part of the ProQuartet young professional training programme.

Following on from their Purcell Room debut as part of the Park Lane Young Artists Series, the quartet have been invited to perform at numerous contemporary music festivals and societies, including the “Second Glance” Festival, London, and the Cheltenham Contemporary Music Society. They made their Wigmore Hall debut in 2006. Other highlights of last year included performances at the Luberon Chamber Music Festival, France and the West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

The quartet’s educational work includes numerous workshops for school children in London sponsored by the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust. They also run their own music courses in France for young musicians and have a strong link with The Gloucester Academy of Music where they frequently give workshops and performances.

Originally from Dublin and currently based in New York City, Isabelle O’Connell is one of Ireland’s most exciting and successful pianists. She studied in Ireland before continuing her studies in New York. Her performances have taken her around North America, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Ireland. She gave her New York debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in January 2002 – only the second Irish pianist ever to perform there. She is a member of the recently formed Syrius Trio and celebrated the Shostakovich centenary with a tour of Ireland in October followed by a concert at Weill Recital Hall, New York, with soprano Sylvia O’Brien.

Isabelle O’Connell is a committed and energetic advocate of music by 20th and 21st century composers. She has played and recorded the work of Irish composers like Philip Martin, Ian Wilson and Frank Corcoran. In 2005 she was selected to participate in a Carnegie Hall workshop and performance featuring the music of John Adams, conducted by the composer.

Isabelle made her début as concerto soloist in 1999, playing Ravel’s Concerto in G at the National Concert Hall, Dublin. In 2003 she was invited to undertake a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada where she collaborated with various artists including the New Zealand String Quartet. In 2004 she made her debut with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under conductor William Eddins.

Isabelle is currently a member of the piano, theory and chamber music faculties at the Lucy Moses and Diller-Quaile Schools of Music in Manhattan.

Ivan Ili´c started musical studies at the age of six and gave his recital debut at the age of eleven. He went on to take degrees in music and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. After capturing all of Berkeley’s music awards, including First Prize in the Concerto Competition, an Eisner Prize, First Prize in the Senior Recital Competition, and a Mary J. Nunes travel grant to the Aspen Summer Music Festival, he left for Paris on an Alfred Hertz Memorial Traveling Fellowship from the university. One month later Ivan was admitted to the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris, where he was awarded a “Premier Prix” in piano performance, followed by a “Diplôme à l’Unanimité” and a “Diplôme Supérieur” from the École Normale de Musique, “Alfred Cortot” in Paris. Before the age of twenty he had launched an international career of solo and chamber music recitals that has taken him all over France and to Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic and the United States.

During his studies he took public classes with the following masterpianists: François-René Duchâble, Dmitri Bashkirov, Jacques Rouvier, Stephen Bishop Kovacevich, Paul Badura-Skoda and Aldo Ciccolini.

In 2004 Ivan was the recipient of awards, fellowships and grants from: the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the Fondation des États-Unis (Paris), the Kariç Foundation (Belgrade), the John Ernest Foundation (California), and the Helen von Ammon Fund for Emerging Artists (San Francisco). The City of Paris sponsored his last recording.

In 2005-2006, he was a resident of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He was recently awarded a grant from the Nadia and Lili Boulanger Foundation in Paris for 2006-2007.

Catherine Leonard began her musical studies in Cork and Dublin and then worked with leading teachers in the USA, Austria and Holland. She is a regular soloist with Irish orchestras and has appeared at many festivals. Catherine is a champion of the music of Ian Wilson. Wilson has written many works specifically for her, including his 1st violin concerto “Messenger,” “Eigenschatten” for violin and DAT tape, and “from the Book of Longing” for violin and piano, which recently received its British and American premieres.

Other collaborators include pianist Charles Owen, cellist Guy Johnston, Julius Drake, and pianist Barry Douglas, with whom she recently performed Beethoven’s Triple concerto and Violin Concerto in Dublin’s National Concert Hall. She is a Principal Violin for the California based chamber music ensemble, Camerata Pacifica.

Forthcoming highlights include performances at the Kilkenny, West Cork and Vogler Festivals, the premiere of another new composition by Ian Wilson, and Tchaikovsky and Mozart concerti in Ireland and South Korea. She will also make her Chicago radio debut as part of the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series.

Born in Dublin in 1958, Hugh Tinney first came to international recognition by winning first prize in two international competitions, the 1983 Pozzoli in Italy and the 1984 Paloma O’Shea in Spain. Since then he has performed in more than 30 countries throughout Europe, the United States, South America and the Far East.

Hugh Tinney’s contribution to Irish concert life has been significant. Highlights include his 1991 “Chopin Plus” and 1995 “Schubert & Beethoven” recital series at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin; the complete Mozart piano concertos at Dublin’s National Concert Hall (1996-98) with the Orchestra of St Cecilia; and a complete cycle of the Beethoven concertos in 1999. He performed the full Beethoven sonata cycle jointly with Philippe Cassard and Joanna MacGregor at Bantry House in April 2004.

In 2000, Hugh Tinney became Artistic Director of the Music Festival in Great Irish Houses. He teaches at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and he has been a jury member at several international piano competitions.