Informal Music Afternoon – 4th May

🎶 Informal Music Afternoon – Sunday, 4th May 🎶
📍 The Model, Sligo (Atrium) | 🕐 1 PM

This month’s IMA brings an exciting mix of classical brilliance and jazz energy:

Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto – performed by Cathal Roche with Sligo Baroque Orchestra

Student virtuosos Athenis (violin) & Lenny Chen (piano) – playing Beethoven & Mozart

Jazz Ensemble:
🎷 Seamus Blake (saxophone)
🎹 Bill Carrothers (piano)
🎸 Dave Redmond (bass)

With a programme embracing both timeless classical works and cutting-edge jazz, this IMA is not to be missed. Enjoy great music in a relaxed setting with coffee and good company.

🎟 Tickets: €8 (Adults) | Children: Free

No booking needed—just drop in and enjoy!

Informal Music Afternoon – 6th April

🎶 Informal Music Afternoon – Sunday, 6th April 🎶
📍 The Model, Sligo (Atrium) | 🕐 1 PM

Join us for another Informal Music Afternoon, a relaxed live music event in a cabaret-style setting, where audiences can enjoy a diverse and engaging programme.

This month features:
🎻 Sligo Baroque Orchestra
🎹 Kieran Quinn – Renowned pianist known for his unique and expressive style

As always, expect the unusual and the unfamiliar, with music that might surprise you. Grab a coffee, find a table, and enjoy the music in a welcoming atmosphere.

🎟 Tickets: €8 (Adults) | Children: Free

No booking required—just come along!

An enchanting evening of music at The Glens Centre

Join the Sligo Baroque Orchestra for an enchanting evening of music at The Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, on Friday, 21st March. Experience the magic of Geminiani’s The Enchanted Forest, the elegance of Haydn’s Divertimento in G, and the timeless beauty of Handel arias, featuring the stunning soprano Katelyn Ressler.

The performance will be accompanied by visuals from Milo Cummins, featuring video sequences of native Irish forests, adding a rich, immersive dimension to the evening.

🎟 Tickets: €15/€12
🔗 Booking: The Glens Centre

Don't miss this captivating journey through Baroque masterpieces!

Sligo Festival of Baroque Music

Sligo Baroque Orchestra together with students of Sligo Academy of Music present works including Geminiani’s The Enchanted Forest.

Sligo Baroque Music Festival began life in 1995, founded by Rod Alston with the Sligo Early Music Ensemble. It has become a well-established highlight in the cultural calendar of Sligo and the north-west of Ireland, taking place on the last weekend of September each year.

The festival aims to present high quality performance of baroque music in a friendly and informal context, and featuring a mix of Irish and international performers - some with an established international reputation, others at an early stage of their careers. The development of young musicians is a key focus in the programme every year.

Informal Music Afternoon Sunday, 4th August 1 pm

The Model, Sligo

Admission €8, children go free

Jane Willow: Singer-Songwriter

Sligo Baroque Orchestra with Soloists:

David Skinner: 18th century guittar

Catherine Tsvikovych: Irish Harp

Martin Moser: French Horn

Cillian Houston: Viola

Judith Pinnick: Viola

Anna Houston: Cello

W.A. Mozart: Horn Concerto in D

G.F. Telemann: Concerto for Two Violas in G

Emma Purcell: Reverie for Harp and Cello

F.Geminiani: “The Art of playing The Guitar or Cittra”

G.B. Noferi: Andante and Andantino

Once again we will be treated to a Premiere performance of a composition by local musician and composer Emma Purcell!

Her octet entitled “Moments on Minerva” was so popular with audiences that members of SBO performed it twice in the last few months.

In August we will hear for the first time her new piece “Reverie” for Harp and Cello.

Another special treat will be a performance on an original 18th century wire strung guittar, a renaissance fore-runner of the modern guitar, also known as cittern. Guittar player David Skinner is joined by members of SBO in Geminiani's “The Art of playing the Guitar or Cittra”, along with a piece by the later composer Giovanni B. Noferi.

Sligo baroque orchestra led by Niamh Crowley will play Mozart's Horn concerto in D featuring Martin Moser, and Telemann Concerto for two Violas featuring Cillian Houston and Judith Pinnick.

For the non-classical part in August we are delighted to welcome for the first time singer-songwriter Jane Willow. https://www.janewillow.com/

Jane's debut album ‘Burn So Bright’ (2021) takes influences from Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake and Richard Hawley. In 2022 Jane collaborated with violinist Steve Wickham (The Waterboys) and performed three double headline concerts across Ireland (Sligo, Dublin, Galway).

Jane will accompany herself on guitar.

Come along and enjoy a cup of coffee in a relaxed atmosphere at the Atrium of the Model.

Musical Treasure

It’s a bit of a secret, but you almost certainly will enjoy the concert on December 1st ...

Hidden Gems in the foyer of the Hawk’s Well Theatre

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Sligo Baroque Orchestra (leader, Nicola Cleary) will unearth some musical treasures from the Eighteenth Century

Thursday 1st December at 8pm in the Foyer, Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo

Admission €10   children free

Informal Music Afternoon Sunday May 1st 2016

in The Model, The Mall, Sligo at 1pm admission €5 children go free

Guest artists from Sligo International Chamber Music Festival, The Vogler String Quartet,

Aoife Ni Briain , Calmin Gilmore and the Mesefe String Quartet will form part of the line-up for this special Informal Music Afternoon, along with Felip Carbonell and Sligo Baroque Orchestra.
 
It is an essential characteristic of Sligo's monthly IMAs that there is always an eclectic mix of music from different genres; and that all who attend will discover music and musicians that are new for them. IMAs are very informal, very relaxed, but are also very stimulating. And they importantly provide a platform for young, emerging performers.
 
A centre piece of the programme will be a performance of Grieg's string quartet op 27 by the Mesefe Quartet who have been part of the Strings Attached project with the Vogler Quartet at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
The Vogler Quartet will play two airs by John Buckley; and a violin sonata by Ysaye, a concerto grosso by Heinichen, and music by Caimin Gilmore and Felip Carbonell will make up Sunday's varied fare.
 
IMA's take place in the Atrium in the Model, beautifully light for a midday event with an equally bright acoustic.
The Gallery Café offer a tempting range of food and drink, children are always welcome (with free admittance), and the set-up is in relaxed cabaret style.
 
We hope to see you there,
 
Rod Alston

A Winter's Tale

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“Composers were pretty much three-a-penny...”

Composers were pretty much three-a-penny, a-pfennig, every schloss had more than enough to keep the local court orchestra busy with new pieces, and the drawing room alive to the sound of the Margrave's daughter's fingers on the harpsichord. (Just as now-a-days, where Irish and English orchestra's are rare and relatively unsupported compared to the hundreds of German professional bands; so it wa in the eighteenth century, most of the Irish and English Big House types cared little for supporting composers or musicians...).

But the three-a-penny German eighteenth century composer was male. It wasn't that the German eighteenth century female mind was less musical, or less creative, or less imaginative, or in any way inferior to that of the male; it was just that that was the way it was. Except it wasn't. Take the sisters of the fellow we know as Frederick the Great: they not only played music but also composed, and their music was performed. Princess Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine of Prussia, who became Princess Wilhelmine Margravine of Bayreuth and established the beginings of the musical life that was in later generations to nuture the talent of Wagner, well, the good Princess not only played and composed for flute and harpsichord, but she also employed a female composer in her court, Anna Bon di Venezia. The Venezia part was not exactly true, her parents (both musicians) came from the lagoon state, but she was definitely a woman and a composer, and...

...and on March 26th 2015 three intrepid and very musical girls in Sligo will re-create the sounds that Ms Anna Bon imagined some two hundred and fifty years ago in the schloss of the the good Princess Wilhemine.

Charlotte Kinsella and Magan Corcoran (flutes) and Emily Gaine (harpsichord) are currently rehearsing Ms Bon's trio opus 3 No 1 – as well as doing the odd bit of study for their Junior Cert. They will perform it as part of the sbos Student Soloist Concert and if you are not there you will miss this bit of entirely female creativity and recreation.

And you will also miss other students performing in works by Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi, Dowland and Heinichen

SBO Student Soloist, with Guest Leader Niamh Crowley The Model

6.30 pm Thursday March 26th

The Model, Sligo

admission €5 - children free

They're back...

Informal Music Afternoons resume with a Russian flavour

The popular cabaret-style Informal Music Afternoons begin the 2015 season with something of a Russian flavour. Russian harpist Ramona Sakaluskaite (who began learning harp aged three and studied and subsequently played professionally for fifteen yearsin St Petersburg) is one of the performers and Russian music, including composers Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, also feature.

These monthly musical treats take place usually on the first Sunday in each month at 1 pm in The Atrium in the Model. The programme is always eclectic, usually with a core of classical chamber music. People come expecting to be surprised and delighted. The Model Cafe is in operation offering wholesome fare and a smile; you can come and go as you please; absolutely ideal way of introducing children to live music in a relaxed atmosphere.

On Sunday February 1st the performers are Nicola Cleary, Anna Houston, Leonard Dorrian, Ramona Sakaluskaite, Felip Carbonell, Bláithín Norah Farrell, and Ferdia Durkin. Nicoloa Cleary, Anna Houston and Leonard Dorrian will perform the two centre movements from one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written: Schubert's sublime second piano trio in E flat.

One aim of Informal Music Afternoons is to encourage really gifted student performers, and next Sunday performing for the first time in an IMA is Bláithín Norah Farrell, a sixteen year old pianist, pupil of Dr John O'Connor at winner of many awards in Dublin and Sligo