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Belfast–born Ian Wilson’s music has been performed and broadcast on six continents and performed at many Festivals around the world including the BBC Proms and Venice Biennale. He is a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-sponsored body of creative artists, and is director of the Sligo New Music Festival.
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Welcome to the new Con Brio season. Despite the turmoil around us we are delighted, and determined, to present an exciting programme of the best classical music and musicians to keep your minds off the daily doom and gloom the media are feeding us. Steering a course between the large-scale and the intimate, we are pleased to welcome to Sligo for the first time to open our season the London Irish Camerata, and making their second visit in four years, the fantastic RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.
On a smaller scale we are presenting the Sligo debuts of two much-lauded piano trios, one French and one Italian, as well as the long-awaited return of French pianist François Frédéric Guy, who so enchanted Sligo audiences a few years ago. Continuing our international theme we are happy to introduce to Ireland the Dutch Ensemble Caméléon with Irish oboist Aisling Casey who, in a wonderfully varied programme, will include the world premiere of a new work of mine. We are also pleased to have again our perennial friends the Vogler Quartet and in his first concert for Con Brio, Irish guitarist and rising star Redmond O’Toole.
The music will be as wide-ranging as ever, but always of the best quality, so whether you want to hear François Frédéric Guy play Beethoven, the Cassard-Gastinel-Grimal Trio perform Ravel, or the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra present Liszt, Con Brio in Sligo can provide it all!
Ian Wilson,
Programme Director (June 2008)
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1. Clarion Hotel, Institute of Technology, Sligo 2. Yeats Memorial Building 3. Markree Castle, Collooney 4. St.Columba’s Church, Drumcliffe |
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The Con Brio Committee
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To run a small business successfully for 10 years is not an easy task in today’s world – but to run a voluntary association such as Con Brio with no major public funding has been a huge challenge, one that we have successfully accomplished to date, thanks to the support of our committee, sponsors, patrons and members. We can all share an immense satisfaction in a job very well done – we have survived despite the loss of many of our sponsors and we continue to run one of the highest calibre concert series in the country!
This year the programme is more varied than ever, ranging from solo recitals for guitar and for piano through chamber concerts for trios, quartets and larger ensembles to symphony orchestra and opera – a veritable feast of music making. We will feature some of the very best musicians in Europe – including François Frédéric Guy, Phillipe Cassard (piano), David Grimal (violin) and Anne Gastinel (cello) as well as the Trio di Parma from Italy, the Ensemble Caméléon from Holland, and of course our longstanding friends – the Vogler Quartet.
We are also delighted to support the OTC tour of Handel’s opera Xerxes and to crown our 10th anniversary season we will present the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in a concert at the end of March featuring an exciting programme of Haydn, Liszt and Brahms... Thanks are due to many of you but most notably to: Sligo County Council Arts Department, St. Angela’s College, Eileen and Ray Monahan, the Model and Niland, the Clarion Hotel and Sligo Park Hotel for their unstinting support of our efforts and to all those of you who have contributed in one way or another.
Here’s to another year of great music!
Luisa Mac Conville
Con Brio Committee
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