Musica Fusion orchestras play National Concert Hall

LAST Saturday was a red-letter day for the young musicians of Musica Fusion when their combined junior and senior orchestra performed the opening act of the evening performance at the 23rd Youth Orchestras Festival at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.

The members of the orchestra have been preparing for their Dublin appearance since last September, the juniors under their musical director Susie Butler, while Aisling Lineen prepared the senior musicians.

The opportunity to perform on the stage of the National Concert Hall is huge experience for the musicians, both young and old and tremendous credit is due to all concerned with Musica Fusion. The young musicians are drawn from Charleville and a wide hinterland area and Susie Butler, who started the venture with some 20 musicians in an upstairs room in Baker’s Road, now caters for 80 musicians in the what was the old Pavilion Cinema in Clanchy Terrace, Charleville.

Charleville was once a town with no facilities for learning music, save for the local brass and reed band, and individuals learning the piano. Traditional music was alien to the people of the town in years past and many said that it would never take-off in Charleville, but now all is changed. A thriving Craobh An Rath Comhaltas branch, started in 2011, has proved that that myth was wrong, presently with a membership of 150 and over 100 children learning traditional Irish music.

Susie Butler’s venture is catering or those who prefer to learn other genres of music, such as classical, as demonstrated when her orchestra played pieces from Tchaikovsky, Bizet and the compositions of John Williams in the National Concert Hall in Dublin last week.

Susie extended sincere thanks to all those who sponsored their trip to Dublin, which enabled the orchestra to perform in this prestigious event that had youth orchestras from all over the country, and Charleville was one of only two from Cork to participate in the event, with those from Dublin, Drogheda, Mayo, Laois and Donegal. The other Cork Orchestra was the ETB Orchestra from Cork.