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The Best of Voice & Wind

Performers
Tullamore Academy Chamber Choir (dir. Ciaran Brady)
Thomas Charles Marshall, organ
Biography

Tullamore Academy Chamber Choir was founded in September 2008 as part of a performing groups’ initiative undertaken by The Academy of Music in Tullamore. Each choral scholar is an advanced student of voice with The Academy and has a different and wide-ranging background in solo, operatic and competitive performance, which enhances this young choir’s ability to undertake some of the more challenging choral works, and contributes to their fresh and unique sound. From the beginning the choir set its sights high, winning second prize in the Chamber Choirs Competition in the Navan Choral Festival and being awarded a certificate of Distinction for Choral Excellence in the Bord Na Móna National Choir of the Year 2009 competition, in its first year of existence. “This young choir is a wonderful and exciting new addition to the midland regions”.

Ciarán Brady  is founder and director of the choir, and is an honours graduate in Music from Maynooth University, where he also completed his Masters degree in Vocal Performance, and undertook further advanced vocal studies in Freiburg in Germany. Ciarẚn’s vast choral experience started at the age of 10 as a boy treble and Head Chorister of the Palestrina Choir in Dublin. While studying Ciarẚn was director of the Maynooth University Chamber Choir in many acclaimed concerts, winning the International Competition at Limerick Choral festival in 1991. Ciarản is now full-time vocal instructor with The Academy of Music, Tullamore, where he is channelling all his energies into high-calibre performing ensembles, of which The Academy Chamber Choir is proving to be a flagship and an emerging force in choral excellence in the midlands.

Thomas Charles Marshall, now a resident of Co. Westmeath, was raised in Portlaoise. He studied organ with Shane Brennan as a Schola Cantorum scholar of St Finian's College, Mullingar, and with Peter Hurford as organ scholar of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with Sanae Yamada in Japan and with David Adams in his Masters of Music Performance Studies at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. Charles is a regular and highly valued recitalist in this series as both solo organist and chamber music player. Charles has been Organist and Director of Music at St Ann's Church, Dawson St., Dublin since 2009. He lived in Japan for 14 years from 1994-2008 studying satsumabiwa, and is regarded as a highly accomplished exponent of this challenging instrument.

Programme

Organ

Joseph Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901)

Sonata no. 4 in A minor, op. 98

Tempo Moderato

Jehan Alain (1911–1940)

Le Jardin Suspendu (Chaconne), JA71

 

Choir

Jake Runestad (b.1986)

Let My Love be Heard

Ēriks Ešenvalds (b.1977)

The Heavens Flock

Arvo Pärt (b.1935)

Bogoroditse Djevo

 

Organ

Josep Muset (1889-1957)

Sancta Virgo Virginum, op. 20

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542

 

Choir

Rihards Dubra (b.1964)

Stetit Angelus

Eric Whitacre (b.1970)

Sleep

Moses Hogan (1957-2003)

Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel