The Village Arts Centre, Kilworth hosts Redmond O'Toole, guitarist, in a programme to include Tarrega, Scarlatti and DeFalla on Thursday 26 July at 8.15 pm.

Since its invention in the eighteenth century, the string quartet has proved one of the most resilient forms, continuously reinvented and repurposed for changing times.

Music Network have opened applications for its annual award, aimed at providing young classical ensembles with the help they need to get their professional career underway.

The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra will tour Galway, Limerick and Cork with Barry Douglas, and Dublin and Sligo with Gautier Capuçon and Paul McCreesh, in April.

Music in Drumcliffe will take place from 5 to 7 May in Sligo and features a range of music centred on the Vogler Quartet.

The Callino Quartet and clarinettist Sarah Beaty play four dates around Ireland in late-March.

The festival, curated by violinist Maya Homburger and double bass player Barry Guy, takes place at Borris House, Carlow, and Duiske Abbey, Kilkenny, on 2–4 March.

Guests will have the opportunity to try out various instruments, and teachers will be on hand to discuss any questions children or adults may have about their music education.

Principal Conductor Alan Buribayev will make his debut outside Dublin with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, in a concert at the WIT College Street Chapel in Waterford on 23 February at 8pm.

The Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) will give the premiere of John Kinsella’s tenth symphony in University Concert Hall, Limerick on 9 February.

Dave Flynn and Aoife Ní Bhriain appear at the National Concert Hall for new music::new Ireland.

Stephen Graham rounds up classical news, including Resurgam celebrating Gabrieli, an exciting line-up for MaerzMusik 2012 in Berlin, Cara O'Sullivan in Sligo, the first EPTA Piano Festival and Concorde at the Contemporary Music Centre.

Stephen Graham's classical music news, including live opera from New York, the Quiet Music Ensemble celebrating John Cage, Linda Buckley performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Irish Composers' Collective and a John Kinsella

Three recent recordings of twentieth and twenty-first century Irish orchestral composition reveal a persistent ambition to fuse an Irish musical heritage with European styles of composition.

The 2012 line-up and season schedule of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland was announced on 1 December at the National Gallery in Dublin by the Minister for the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Mr. Jimmy Deenihan T.D.

Kaleidoscope, a monthly night of classical and new music curated by violinist Cliodhna Ryan and cellist Kate Ellis, will celebrate its second birthday at the Button Factory in Dublin on 11 December, with music by David Fennessy and others.

The RTÉ Lyric FM Choirs for Christmas Competition is inviting all choirs, school, college, amateur and semi-professional, to submit an entry for a chance to win exposure as well as cash prizes, ranging from €200 to €500.

Dublin Brass and Dun Laoghaire Choral Society will perform a festive Christmas concert in the Methodist Church on Brighton Road in Dublin at 3pm on 4 December. Vox Merus will perform in Galway on 24 November.

Alexej Gorlatch, a young Ukranian pianist who won the 2009 Dublin International Piano Competition, will tour Ireland from 25 November to 3 December.

Bill Whelan, Grammy-winning composer of Riverdance, has been awarded the 2011 University College Dublin Foundation Day Medal.

The RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet will host interactive workshops at ten schools in Cork across 14—18 November.

Was Gustav Mahler the most influential composer of the last 150 years? Two recent books by the journalist and broadcaster Norman Lebrecht claim as much; George Rafael, though, feels the question of Mahler's influence is more personal.

To celebrate the bicentenary of Franz Liszt's birth, amateur pianist James Holden sets himself a new challenge.

Were Arnold Schoenberg's American years really spent in frustration, poverty and obscurity?

Funding for the arts is essential, but without the right approach it can blunt artists’ entrepreneurial skills, writes Toner Quinn

Commissioned to compose a work in response to 9/11, John Adams confronted the question: can modern classical music still be the transcendental force we need it to be? by Barra Ó Séaghdha

Being cut off is a state of mind, writes composer John McLachlan

The author of A Clockwork Orange may have been better known as a novelist, but Anthony Burgess was also a prolific composer whose music is only now being explored.

The melody of ‘Danny Boy’ has its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century in the North of Ireland. An old harper’s melody was collected and embellished to make the air that we know today, but by who?

The digital medium will set radio free, but will it change the essence of radio, asks Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

There is a long line of theories claiming that we have reached the end of art, but they are forgetting something, writes Joanna Demers

The direct impact the new digital culture is having on music, in terms of access, dissemination and copyright, is well documented, but the indirect impact less so.

"Our ahistorical postmodern age, with its mistrust of continuities and grand narratives, has paradoxically allowed the reinsertion of Gesualdo into musical history." A new book on the composer shows that he was centuries ahead of

The Orchestra of St Cecilia’s ten-year series of Johann Sebastian Bach’s church cantatas culminated this year. Benedict Schlepper-Connolly reflects on their allure.

"The golden age of music magazine publishing and the dominance of the critic in the middle of the twentieth century has recognisably passed". Is the era of the critic coming to an end?

In a masterful self-promotional effort that began in his twenties and lasted for the remainder of his career, Richard Wagner managed to develop himself into a ‘brand’ – a name, look, ideology and product that continues today.

Entrepreneur: Origin early 19th cent.

If we want new opera to relate to our twenty-first century experience, we must return to first principles, says Christopher Fox

The Jerome Hynes Commission Opportunity for Young Composers, IrelandDeadline: 31 December 2009Open to composers under the age of 30, who are resident or domiciled in Ireland.

How can musicians that are so eminent in their own genre fail to understand the conventions of another?

People plus music: it’s a simple formula for compelling television programmes, but why does screening creativity in music defeat even the most imaginative producers and directors, asks Christopher Fox.

Classical/Early   CD Review Andrew McGregor Sat, 9:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cdreview/Classical Collection Sarah Walker Mon–Fri, 10:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classicalcollection Composer of the Week Donal...

LISTINGS FROM THE CONTEMPORARY MUSIC CENTREContinued from the Journal of Music August–September 2009Works Received, June–July 2009Ball, Derek, An Alien Calls Earth [2009], cl perc tape.

Classical/Early   CD Review Andrew McGregor Sat, 9:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cdreview/Classical Collection Sarah Walker Mon–Fri, 10:00am www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classicalcollection Composer of the Week Donal...

Continuum, London & New York

The Celtic Viol, Alia Vox (AVSA 9865)

Mike Hanrahan, Cork, writes:While I welcome Bill Whelan’s commentary on the digital rights debacle (Aug-Sept), and indeed his call to arms to all concerned authors and composers, a part of me cannot but feel it’s all a little too late.

This is really out there

This is really happening

Stravinsky, emigré A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler’s Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California (Yale University Press) by Dorothy Lamb Crawford examines the gathering of sixteen performers, fourteen composers (including Stravinsky...

How is music written? A short bit, then extended, and soon the whole piece is there? John McLachlan discusses the subtle paths from conception to finished work.

Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth, Torunn Østrem Ossum (sopranos), Arve Henriksen (trumpet) St Brendan’s Church, Bantry, Co. Cork1 July 2009I got spectacularly lost on the long drive down to Bantry.

In an extract from his forthcoming biography of Irish Times music critic Charles Acton (1914–1999), Richard Pine discusses the role of the critic from the 1950s up to the 1980s.

Who knew there was an Irish didgeridoo? Breandán Ó hEaghra finds out at the Galway Early Music Festival

Christophe Rousset, Les Talens Lyriques, Soloists of Ensemble Intercontemporain, Le Concert Français, Pierre Hantaï, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Susanna Mälkki Cité de la Musique, Paris 9–11 May 2009 The analogy between Jean-Philippe...

Front cover (recto and verso) of the first issue of The Irish Musical Monthly, an early twentieth-century Dublin periodicalThe Irish Musical Monthly.

Si Dolce è il TormentoDiatribe DIACD003Francesco Turrisi is an Italian pianist, accordionist and percussionist who has been brightening the Irish jazz scene with his unique blend of influences since moving to Dublin three years ago.

A crisis of identity in choral music is leaving it professionally sidelined and with little status in society

The first in a series of curious anecdotes from musical history.

Kuljit Bhamra, Shahid Khan, the Orlando Consort and Jonathan Mayer Described as ‘musical conversations across the Indian Ocean’, Mantra is a new work cultivated by the National Centre for Early Music (York) which combines sixteenth-century

Yannis Kyriakides, whose online installation forms part of Sound and Music’s first season Sound and MusicSound and Music has launched its first season.

The discourse around music serves only to divide us

Have we lost clear sight of the purpose of music criticism?

Forgotten Composers; Musical Twins in Canada

Peter Rosser on the intimacy and ritual of live music

Is the party over for opera?

Various artistsThe NMC SongbookNMC D150For a label that was set up with the decidedly recherché aim of celebrating contemporary British music (an aspiration whose reach was happily extended to encompass living Irish composers) and whose nam

Un Bel Di…RTÉ lyric fm CD118This tribute to the County Mayo-born soprano Margaret Burke Sheridan has been released to mark the fiftieth anniversary of her death, although its appearance chimes poignantly with the death in September of the o

On the attractions of the cinematic canon

Unlocking the Archive / Session with the Pipers /Music Recording / Casadh Arís / Temple Bar Trad / Música Nueva de Mexico / Outof Time / New Books on Music in Ireland / Winteriser / Happy to Meet, Sorry toPart / Dublin Philharmonic in USA /

Shakespeare’s vainglorious corpulent knight Falstaff has proved an irresistible lure to composers over the centuries. Salieri, Mozart, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams and, most memorably, Verdi, have all set the...

The first composition teacher of Charles Villiers Stanford, the ‘father’ of the renaissance in English classical music, came from Tralee.

'Access' is now a guiding principle across music and the arts, but what does it mean in practice?

Gig GuideMany readers will be aware that JMI sends out a bulletin and gig guide email every Monday. The email features nationwide event listings, the latest news from the music world and frequent competitions for tickets and CDs.

Before JMI began in 2000, I wrote down a list of people I intended to ask to write for the magazine. They were people I regarded as cornerstones in Irish musical life.

A Pale Yellow SkyRTÉ lyric fm CD115It is difficult to call to mind another concert harpist of the calibre of County Down’s Clíona Doris who has the imagination to think differently about an instrument perhaps best known by audiences...

Bax, Bernstein and BeethovenRTÉ lyric fm CD116Only one of the traditional ‘Three Bs’ features on the debut offering from the ensemble avalon, but so persuasive is this coupling of Beethoven with Arnold Bax and Leonard Bernstein that...

The great works of the classical canon abide because they have something to say about the here and now. We need to stop devaluing them, writes Michael Quinn.

For over a decade, John Kelly has been broadcasting his own distinct mix of music on national radio, first with the BBC, then Eclectic Ballroom on Radio Ireland (now Today FM) and Mystery Train on RTÉ Radio 1, establishing a reputation as a

Classical/EarlyCD Review – Andrew McGregor, Sat, 9am, www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/cdreview/Classical Collection – Sarah Walker, Mon–Fri, 10am, www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classicalcollectionComposer of the Week – Donal Macleod, Mon–Fri, 12pm,...

Benedict Schlepper-Connolly gives an insider’s view of the Irish Composers’ Collective.

JMI talks to violinist and violist Cora Venus Lunny.

Islands Tour; The Reel Deal; The West Awake; Free State IV; Globalising Irish Music – Podcast by Bill Whelan; DEAF; Creative Spaces; Béal Tuinne and Conal Ó Gráda at the Cork Folk Festival; Eliza Carthy in Enniskillen; Seán Ó Riada Memorial

National Chamber Choir, Paul Hillier (conductor)Harty Room, Queen’s University, Belfast11 June 2008Faced routinely with the deepest sentiments, sacred and profane, where do singers position themselves emotionally?

The Connemara SuiteCloonisle Records TARACD 4021In the last issue of JMI, Bill Whelan spoke candidly about the vertiginous experience of finding himself at the centre of Riverdance, the interval-filling distraction turned international phen

SolasFounded in 1997, The Mornington Singers move elegantly into their second decade with an accomplished collection of a cappella performances.Based in Dublin, the 36-strong mixed voice choir was begun by graduates of Trinity College who w

Bernadette Greevy reads a new book on nineteenth-century Irish-born composer, Michael Balfe.

Apostle of IrelandDivine Art DDA25065Celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, Canty, Scotland’s only professional group dedicated to the performance of medieval music, turns its attention towards Ireland and specifically to Irish plai

Dr Desmond Fennell, Maynooth, writes:In the March-April issue Niall Ó Ciosáin reviewed Music in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, edited by Michael Murphy and Jan Smaczny. Inevitably, Mr Ó Ciosáin felt it necessary to deal with the much...

D’Amore serves up one of the most curious listening experiences gleaned from a classical recording in many a long day.

Niall Ó Ciosáin reviews a new book on music in nineteeth-century Ireland, and revisits the controversy regarding the influence of nationalism on the development of Irish music.

John McKenna reviews a new book by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross