Celebrating women in song and story

Play, Lady, Play  is the theme of the 2016 Galway Early Music Festival, which runs this weekend, May 12-15. This year’s event is all about women and no group is better placed to celebrate women than the group which founded Galway Early Music, The Good Ladies of Galway.

Reuniting after 19 years for a special Festival concert this Saturday, May 14 at 4pm in the Connacht Print Works, Penny MacBeth, Ann Priestley Smith, Katharine Mac Mághnuis and Maura Ó Cróinín have promised a show spanning 800 years of music celebrating women and Maytime in all its green glory.

This is only one of the intriguing and entertaining concerts and events in a weekend dedicated to women as composers, musicians, patrons and inspiration in early music.

Other festival highlights include gender-bending baroque opera arias with mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty this Friday, May 13; the musical life of musician, patron and powerful political woman, Margaret of Austria with Sarah Groser and ensemble on Sunday; and 12th century troubadour songs of love, relating to both women and men, on Saturday.

Elsewhere, the young musicians of Athenry Music School and the St Nicholas Choristers will perform the opening concert of the Festival with The Gregory Walkers (Laoise O’Brien, Malachy Robinson and Eamon Sweeney), as part of the Galway Early Music pilot project Early Music for Young Musicians.

Over the weekend, festival-goers can get close to the music, instruments and performers with the much-loved family event, this year given by the Gregory Walkers. There will be free a talk and early Irish harp-taster workshop with Siobhán Armstrong, while Penny MacBeth, a co-founder of the Good Ladies of Galway, will have an exhibition of her art. There will also be an instrument-makers’ showcase; and a Renaissance dance Workshop.

■ For further information and ticket booking visit www.galwayearlymusic.com