Over 350 young people keep music Coole

More than 350 young musicians aged between six and 20 years will take to the stage in the sixth annual Coole Music Orchestra Festival in Gort. The musicians will make up 10 orchestras participating in the festival that takes place on Sunday, March 3 in Gort Community Centre.

Included as part of the official cultural programme of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the theme of this year’s festival is Young Sounds: Across Borders.

Hailing from the four corners of Ireland the performers include the Ulster Youth Jazz Orchestra, County Cork School of Music Junior Orchestra, Dublin-based Young European Strings Intermediate Orchestra, Limerick’s Sing Out With Strings Orchestra and the Sligo Academy of Music Sinfonietta.

Galway-based orchestras performing include the Coole Music Youth and Junior Orchestras, the Galway Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Athenry Music School Youth Orchestra and the Athenry Guitar Orchestra.

The orchestras will perform in two concerts at 1pm and 6pm, presenting their individual programmes before combining to perform the festival finale – a musical treat featuring the assembled young musicians performing together on stage.

The brainchild of Coole Music School founder and musical director, German-born Katharina Baker, the festival was first conceived as a performance platform for young musicians in the West of Ireland.

“Talking to colleagues around the country,” Katharina says, “I found that many conductors of young orchestras shared the same experience – they wanted to give their young musicians more quality performance opportunities to work towards.”

Inspired by the Irish Association of Youth Orchestras (IAYO) annual orchestral festival in the National Concert Hall, Katharina decided to initiate a festival for west of Ireland based youth orchestras in 2008.

“The success was instant,” says Katharina, “and the festival has since become an annual highlight on the calendars of young orchestras in the west. Soon other orchestras around the country applied to join and the past six years have seen a vibrant mix of performing groups from all over Ireland and even guest performances from abroad.”

Festival manager Fiona Buckley, who originally joined Coole Music as a parent volunteer and now manages the day-to-day operations of the organisation, pulls the various strings of the festival together.

“All our orchestra families like to be involved in this event – there is a great sense of community around it,” says Fiona.

“Around 50 volunteers get involved every year to make the festival run smoothly.  The parents are wonderful and all contribute in some way – from stage building and management, organising refreshments for the participants, managing parking or running the front of house, all jobs are important to make the festival the success it has become.”

As festival manager Fiona is continually looking to bring the festival to new audiences. A new addition to this year’s festival are orchestral percussion workshops for music students with Dublin-based percussionist Shay Lally and world drumming workshops for members of the public with Italian-born Alan Preims, percussion teacher at Coole Music.

These will be held on Saturday, March 2 at Gort Community School and booking via info@coole-music.com is required.

Tickets for the sixth annual Coole Music Orchestra Festival are available on info@coole-music.com or at the door.