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.
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
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