Irish Visitors to Collaborate in Free Concert of Celtic Music

Seven guest artists from the Irish World Music Centre and former River-dance costar Colin Dunne will join students and faculty from the School of Music for a free concert of Celtic music on Thursday, March 8, at 8:15 p.m. in Ford Hall. The performance will include Irish folk music, adaptations by Schubert and Brahms, and contemporary compositions. This collaborative performance will be the capstone event of a weeklong series of workshops and rehearsals conducted at the College by the visitors from Ireland.

The Irish World Music Centre at the University of Limerick, a graduate school offering performance and academic courses in music and dance, has a special interest in research and innovation in Irish and Irish-related music worldwide. In 1999 an anonymous gift established a program that enables students from the music center and Ithaca College to study at the partner institution. The gift also supports a series of performance exchanges.

This year four students from Limerick are spending the first half of the spring semester studying at the School of Music. Joining them for the March 8 performance will be Dunne, a professional dancer, and seven faculty members from the music center: pianist and composer Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, the center’s director and founder; cellist Ferenc Szücs; singers Sandra Joyce and Helen Phelan; dancers Catherine Foley and Mary Nunan; and flutist Niall Keegan.

The March 8 performance is the first of three concerts featuring musicians from the two institutions. Next year Ithaca College performers will travel to Limerick; the year after that the concert will be held again in Ithaca.

For more information call Alex Dippold in the School of Music at 274-3717.

Photo: Foo Yin Hong, Lisa Grossman, and James Eccles, scholarship students from the Irish World Music Centre in Limerick, Ireland, will join musicians from the School of Music and guest artists from the music center for a performance of Celtic music. The concert will take place in Ford Hall on March 8.

photo by Alex Dippold