Even lockdown can’t stop the music
USUALLY whenever she returns to Wexford, Hannah likes to visit her grandmother, Ruth. They play music together, Hannah on the French horn, Ruth on the piano.
However, like so many family members, Hannah and Ruth weren’t able to visit one another during the lockdown, which obviously meant they couldn’t play music together either.
But where there’s a will there’s a way. ‘My grandmother has been cocooning during quarantine and I haven’t been allowed inside her house so we came up with a system where I built a “stage” of pallets outside her music room window,’ Hannah says.
‘She rigged up an amplifier and put the microphone into her piano and the amp out on the window sill so I can hear her and I face my bell towards the window so she can hear me.
‘Then I put a mirror on my music stand so I can see her and we’ve been playing away like that several times - it actually works very well and some neighbours have said they can hear us almost a kilometre away.’
Clearly the neighbours liked what they heard because Hannah and Ruth are planning a concert in the coming weeks, an outdoor performance for those in their locality.
‘We’re preparing a short 11 a.m. coffee concert some weekend morning that we will perform at the end of June (weather depending) using this set up and with a socially distanced seating plan for our neighbours and family friends, setting up some benches in our corn field behind her house,’ said Hannah.
‘The music world won’t be opening up anytime soon we decided to create our own performance opportunities.’