BAGPIPES AND harps, France, Spain, and Scotland, the mediaeval world to the 18th century, all will be explored and celebrated for the 2012 Galway Early Music Festival.
The festival, which was voted among the top six international festivals in 2011 by Classical Music magazine, runs from May 17 to 20.
The theme this year is ‘Social Harmony; when Tradition and High Art Meet’ and will examine how tunes played at a peasant’s wedding and instruments like the hurdy-gurdy and bagpipes, eventually found their way into the courts and became popular among the nobility.
The festival opens on Thursday 17 at 8pm in St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church with a performance by the Cois Cladaigh Chamber Choir, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Friday 18 at 1pm in The Chapel of the Poor Clares convent, Francois Lazarevitch will show that it is not just Scotland where the bagpipes are played but France too, with ‘1,000 years of Bagpipe in France’.
Other events will include Les Musicians de Saint Julien and Francois Lazarevitch performing Le Berger Poet/The Shepherd Poet, a concert of 18th century French pastoral music, at St Nicholas Collegiate Church at 8.30pm that evening.
Andrew Lawrence-King and The Harp Consort, alongside guitarist Steven Player, will explore the music of Spain and the New World on Saturday 19. Harpist Siobhán Armstrong and Coracle will perform ‘Interlace & The Otherworld’ featuring the Gaelic music of Scotland on Sunday May 20.
There will also be family themed events. This year’s festival will also see ‘Putting Music in its Place’, a new technology project commissioned by Galway Early Music. Using smart phone technology, visitors will be brought on an aural tour which will bring the sounds and music of medieval Galway to life via mobile phone technology.
For a full programme of events and ticket prices see www.galwayearlymusic.com as well as Facebook and Twitter.
