Who we have helped

MaSamba Samba School was created on the huge wave of enthusiasm following the 1994 Big Bang Festival at the City Arts Centre. Initially the group was set up as a team-building exercise for the staff of the arts centre, but demands for performances and workshops soon saw the group becoming independent and working in partnership with the City Arts Centre on numerous projects until the Centre closed the doors on the Moss Street premises. MaSamba has always had an open-door policy of encouraging those with little or no previous drumming experience to attend its weekly community workshops, as well as maintaining a semi-professional performance group which is available to play a wide range of events.

Co-founder and Artistic Director of the Ortús Chamber Music Festival, established in Cork in 2015, Sinéad is passionate about bringing together Irish and international musicians for concerts, education work and audience development in the wider community.

An avid chamber musician, Sinéad has performed at IMS Open Chamber Music (Prussia Cove), the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, the opening of the Bozar Season (Brussels) and the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She is a member of the Laguna Quartet and the European Chamber Ensemble and has collaborated with musicians including Tasmin Little, Barry Douglas and the Vanbrugh String Quartet.

As a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra for seven years, she toured Europe, South America, the United Arab Emirates and the Caribbean. As Principal Cellist of EUYO she led the section at numerous high profile events, including the BBC Proms and The Armistice Day 100 Years Anniversary Ceremony, performing at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe during a ceremony marking the centenary of the end of World War I in front of 84 Heads of State and world leaders, and a live television audience of millions.

The Centre opened its doors in November 2013 and is an intergenerational project where age is irrelevant. It aims to bring all members of the community together to enjoy affordable music classes and other music and arts activities. The Centre houses the St. Agnes' Crumlin Community Choir, the Memory Lane Choir, for those diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease and the St. Agnes' Cultural and Heritage Society. The Centre also provides quality affordable music classes in a variety of instruments to the wider community.

Its School Project alone has enabled over 1,000 children to have the opportunity to learn musicianship, to play an instrument, and to play in an ensemble and the programme has extended to the parents of the students and to the entire community, maintaining participation of ex-pupils through to their adulthood and including adults who have never learned music in the late-starter orchestra and in staged musical productions. The wider community has access to many free concerts and activities during the year and to live theatre productions of great classics of musical theatre and pantomime.

The Headway Ireland Choir brings together people from different cultural backgrounds who share a passion for music to develop skills and confidence across several areas including listening, vocal production, group participation and cooperation. It also seeks to develop performance-related skills and confidence, and to impact positively on the emotional management and mood of its members. The choir uses its platform to raise awareness of ABI and the challenges it presents to people recovering from it.

Matthew plays a hybrid sarode which was created with funds from the Music Capital Scheme to develop a new instrument particularly for playing Irish traditional music. He has studied North Indian classical music for over a decade with Sougata Roy Chowdhury in Kolkata and more recently with UK-based sarodiya, K. Sridhar. Matthew has performed Indian music across the globe and was a founding member of successful fusion group, The Bahh Band. He has recorded with a host of contemporary Irish musicians such as Tommy Hayes, Sean Tyrell and Ronan O'Snodaigh and collaborated with Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill on a recent tour of India.

Laoise has produced three critically acclaimed solo albums, Just Harp (1999), Ceis (2010), and Fáilte Uí Cheallaigh (2015), as well as a live duo album, The Wishing Well (2010), with fiddle player Michelle O’Brien. Laoise was a founding member of traditional group Bumblebees with whom she recorded two albums (1997, 1999) and toured extensively internationally. Laoise continues to tour with Trad legends Tommy Peoples and Breanndán Begley since their Music Network tour in 2011. She also has a number of musical collaborators including a duo and upcoming album with uilleann piper Tiarnan Ó Duinnchinn, Albiez Trio with Cormac Breatnach (whistle) & Tola Custy (fiddle), Scottish Gaelic singer Kathleen MacInnes, double bassist Martin Brunsden, and is a member of Fiddletree, a group from America, Cape Breton and Scotland who play eight instruments made from the same tree.

Lucia began playing the fiddle at the age of four. While she first started off playing classical music, she quickly began to develop an interest in and a love for traditional Irish music and has since become an accomplished player in many different genres. She is the winner of many national titles, including the Fiddler of Dooney, the International Pan Celtic title and has numerous All Ireland titles from Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.

Lucia completed her BMus degree at CIT Cork School of Music where she studied classical music with Gregory Ellis and traditional music with Johnny McCarthy. She also has recently completed her MA in performance at both CIT Cork School of Music and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden where she also undertook to learn some Swedish Folk music. Lucia is a member of Strung, a contemporary Irish music ensemble, who originally formed in Cork and have toured extensively in Ireland, Europe and the USA. She has also performed around the world with ensembles and orchestras including the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, the National Folk Orchestra of Ireland, the University of Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Suptrio and Atlas. Lucia received Music Capital Scheme funding to purchase an Ian Knepper violin.

International award-winning violinist Patrick Rafter has toured Europe, Asia and America as concert violinist, chamber and orchestral musician, and currently studies under Maxim Vengerov and Oleg Kaskiv at the International Menuhin Music Academy Switzerland.

During his career, Patrick has studied with and performed alongside some of the greatest performers and teachers in the world today, including Maxim Vengerov, Schlomo Mintz, Barry Douglas, John O’Conor, Igor Ozim, Serjei Krylov, Reiner Honeck, Maurizio Fucs and Graf Mourja. He has also worked with some of the leading composers of the world today, such as Arvo Pärt, and performed with some of the greatest conductors including Semyon Bychkov, Marin Alsop, Sir Mark Elder and Gianedra Noseda.

Eilís has won many awards and accolades including All-Ireland Fleadh titles, the Oireachtas and the O’Carolan Cup at the ESB Feis Ceoil. Having completed her BMus degree at DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, she was awarded the Leo Rowsome award for the highest achievement in traditional music 2013. She completed a Masters in Music at Queen’s University in Belfast in 2014 and is currently undertaking a PhD in music, focusing on old harp collections and music from the 1800s.

Eilís has premiered contemporary works by Linda Buckley (RTÉ’s resident composer in 2012), with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and has performed in the O2 in Dublin as part of the Notre Dame Gathering alongside Noel Eccles. She is also a member of the band Skipper’s Alley, who have released their first album following a win of the coveted Loic Raison competition in Lorient, Brittany.

Neil has been involved in experimental, electronic and electro-acoustic music for the past sixteen years and has toured extensively in Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and the US. His work has been shown/performed at Resonances Festival @ IRCAM Paris, Kunsthalle, Berlin, Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. He has held residencies at the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, USA and EMS – Swedish Institute of Electro-Acoustic Music, Stockholm, Sweden. As a composer, he has written for solo, duo, string quartet, large ensemble and orchestra along with mixed media projects. He has recently worked with the Bang on a Can Ensemble and David Crowell (Phillip Glass Ensemble). Neil received Music Capital Scheme funding to purchase a modular synthesiser.

Liam was born into a musical family in Dublin. His father Mick O’Connor is a flute player, researcher of music and a founder member of the Castle Céilí Band. During his youth, Liam was taught by Séamus Glackin and won several All-Ireland and Oireachtas fiddle titles. He was awarded TG4 Young Musician of the Year in 2002. He has performed as a soloist and in duets with Liam O’Flynn, Noel Hill and Harry Bradley among others. In 2009, he released a critically acclaimed CD entitled Dublin Made Me with uilleann piper Seán McKeon. In March 2017 he released his long awaited solo CD The Loom, described by The Irish Times as "A multi-layered treasure trove." (*****)

The Julianstown Youth Orchestra was founded in 2011 by Maria and Fergus Sheil. It has quickly grown and now has approximately 100 members which are organised into 2 orchestras - a junior orchestra consisting of primary school children and a senior orchestra consisting mainly of secondary school students. The aim of the orchestra is to provide a uniquely high-quality music experience for its members, who are drawn from counties Meath, Louth and Dublin. The orchestra operates as a not-for-profit community organisation. It is led musically by Fergus Sheil and operated by a voluntary committee.