The pianist Finghin Collins has been announced as Music for Galway’s new Artistic Director. The thirty-five year old from Dublin will take over from the composer Jane O’Leary at the end of January. Delia Breathnach, chair of Music for Galway, said the organisation, founded in 1981, was ‘thrilled to have been able to secure the services of an artist of such calibre’.

Collins, who is also artistic director of the New Ross Piano Festival, studied with John O’Conor at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and with Dominique Merlet at the Geneva Conservatoire. He won the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in 1999 and since then has performed with orchestras all around the world, as well as in solo and in chamber ensembles. He is (until the end of the 2012/2013 season) an Associate Artist of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

‘We need culture and music more than ever to provide an outlet for our emotions, an escape from the daily routine,’ said Collins in response to his appointment. ‘There is nothing quite like live music, performed in the flesh before us, to provide this comfort, to inspire us and to open our minds and our hearts.’

Music for Galway operates a year-round programme of classical music concerts. The organisation recently established an archive of concert posters, tickets, photographs and other memorabilia at the James Hardiman Library in NUI Galway.

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