Galway Early Music Festival

The Galway Early Music Festival has in the past been responsible for launching the careers of some of the country’s most successful early music acts, bringing mediaeval and Renaissance music to a new audience. The theme of the 2012 festival, beginning today, is Social Harmony: when tradition and high art meet, and its programme explores the areas where the division of court music and ‘peasant’ music blurs and draws on musical traditions from across Europe.

The festival will be opened today by Nicholas Carolan, the Director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and the first performance will be a selection of early song: motets, madrigals and villancicos sung by Cois Cladaigh Chamber Choir. Friday sees an afternoon concert by Francois Lazarevitch exploring the bagpiping tradition in France followed by a set of suites and sonatas for flute and musette by the same performer, with Le Musiciens de Saint-Julien. Saturday is the festival’s busiest day, with talks and performances in the Galway City Museum, a walking tour of mediaeval Galway, and finishing with a concert of dance-music from Spain, Protugal, Africa and South America by Andrew Lawrence-King and The Harp Consort. The festival closes with Interlace & The Underworld, a concert of early Gaelic music at Aughanure Castle in Oughterard. Throughout May, the festival is also hosting a smartphone ‘aural tour’, in which you can hear the sounds and music of a mediaeval city as you walk around Galway.

For ticket booking and information, click here.

galwayearlymusic.com