News
Summer concerts on the way for Esker orchestra
The Esker Festival Orchestra has managed to raise over €8,000 in crowd funding for its series of summer concerts around the country featuring young musicians and a new tutoring collaboration with the country’s top professional companies.
Esker native Peter Joyce is the driving force behind the youth orchestra, which won the hearts of the Galway public last summer when it played an outdoor concert of movie theme tunes in the Spanish Arch during the Film Fleadh. The dynamic musical ensemble also played a concert in the Galway Cathedral.
Peter set up the Esker Festival Orchestra in 2014 to fill a void for emerging musicians to practice, play and socialise together and this year the plan – subject to funding – is to set up a residency in NUI Galway for nine days during the summer while they prepare their repertoire for film and chamber music concerts.
The group will then tour Galway, Belfast, Dublin and Cork with the main concert set for the Galway Cathedral on June 30.
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Their first collaboration is also planned with The Galway Music Residency and the Galway ConTempo Quartet who, along with members of the RTÉ Concert and Symphony Orchestras, will provide tutoring to the members.
The orchestra will be performing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade, the Mozart G Major Flute Concerto with rising star Miriam Kaczor and as well as a new work by a young composer to be premiered by the orchestra.
“The Esker Festival Orchestra is a non-profit group, organised voluntarily by the musicians. All the funding received will go towards paying for the accommodation and food for the musicians taking part, transport, venue and equipment hire. It is very important to us that no musicians are excluded based on lack of financial means,” explained Peter.
The cost of putting on this summer’s project is around €25,000. They launched an appeal for funding of €8,000 on the crowd funding website, fundit.ie, and in a couple of weeks managed to attract €8,645 in donations. In exchange the donors will receive a range of tickets to the concerts and DVDs of the performances.
Peter, a saxophone and clarinet player, has previously worked with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the Dublin City Jazz Orchestra and musicians such as Imelda May, Liam Ó Maonlaí, Sinead O’Connor and Mary Coughlan.
He set up the venture to give an outlet to musicians studying here who have been forced to emigrate to find opportunities to further develop their skills.
Auditions are extremely open – musicians simply video themselves playing a piece and email the video.
The National Youth Symphony Orchestra costs upwards of €500 to take part in, which has proved prohibitively expensive for many young musicians.
For advanced students and budding professionals who could not afford the fees, this meant there was no nationally inclusive ensemble and subsequently no opportunity to meet and perform with their counterparts across the country.
Last year they received funding from the Arts Council of Ireland but they have to rely on public support to shore up the rest of the cost.
Further details are available on their website www.eskerfestivalorchestra.com
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
