A Colourful Debut

2016 may have been a tough year for music, but that certainly wasn’t the case for emerging Fermanagh band Anto & the Echoes. After only a few short months of forming and honing their sound, they took on their debut gig in July. Punters were turned away from Charlie’s bar as the crowd reached maximum capacity early in the night. A series of well-received gigs around Northern Ireland followed, and the band returned to Charlie’s to close the year with another sell-out show.

Continue reading “A Colourful Debut”

Free Your Voice! Free Your Writing!

Valerie Whitworth writes:

 Together One Voice are starting the New Year with a challenge to free your natural voice and increase your singing skills!

This term we will be focusing on releasing the voice,  vocal development, singing skills, confidence building with some small group work on pitch,  and harmony work.  Many people come to my classes with stories of how they were told not to sing by a parent or teacher, or not allowed to join the choir.
The truth is – if you can speak you can sing.

Room, Room, Room for Mummers’ Rhymes

The start button on the vintage cassette player makes a loud clunk. The tape hisses and crackles, then my father’s voice fills the room with with a tumbling run of words:

Room, Room, my gallant room, give me room to rhyme
I’II show you some activity about this Christmastime
The active youth, the active age
Our act was never acted on the stage….

Continue reading “Room, Room, Room for Mummers’ Rhymes”

The Brick – a Prequel

In the summer of 2001 I decided to build a low red brick wall around the back garden of my house in Enniskillen. Being a money-canny Ulsterman I looked for the cheapest cheapest bargain bricks I could find.

Those are all the seconds, the yard-man at Acheson and Glovers brickworks informed me, Their colours vary too much so they don’t match our best bricks.

They are all rejects I pointed out, and haggled a deal. Continue reading “The Brick – a Prequel”

The Vanburgh Quartet

The Vanbrugh Quartet (Gregory Ellis, Keith Pascoe, violins; Simon Aspell, viola; Christopher Marwood, cello) has enjoyed a successful international career throughout Europe, the Americas and the Far East. Based in Cork since 1986, it has brought string quartet music to audiences throughout Ireland and has given more than one thousand concerts in venues ranging from small country schools to the major city halls.

Continue reading “The Vanburgh Quartet”