Entertainment
Padraig joins the Three Sopranos and RTÉ Symphony Orchestra for Leisureland show
Three of Ireland’s finest sopranos – Celine Byrne, Regina Nathan and Cara O’Sullivan – will join forces with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and Loughrea tenor Padraig Connaughton in Galway on Wednesday, June 5 to present The Three Sopranos Summer Gala.
The concert, conducted by John Finucane, will take place in Leisureland for RTÉ Radio 1’s John Murray Show and will be presented by Kathryn Thomas.
There will also be concerts in Limerick, Cork and Waterford as part of the same series. Kathryn Thomas will report for the John Murray Show following concerts in Galway and Limerick and there will be a final radio item on Monday, June 10 following concerts in Cork and Waterford.
Each of the four concerts will feature a John Murray Show listener, selected through the programme’s Sing with the Sopranos Search, and the Galway participant is garage service manager and sheep farmer Padraig Connaughton from Loughrea. He will sing the Neapolitan song O Sole Mio on stage with the sopranos and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and is currently being coached for this role by Celine Byrne.
Through a remarkable series of events, in recent months, Celine has discovered family relatives in Galway, so this opportunity to coach Padraig means a lot to her. Celine, through her grandmother’s stepbrother, Major General Kevin Murphy, now living in Galway, has traced family connections to the Quinn family in Tuam whose family-owned pub, The Rustic Vaults, has been part of the Tuam community for over 100 years.
Padraig works in Leahy’s Garage in Loughrea and is also a part-time sheep farmer who says he sings to his flock to round them up.
The son of Leonard and Lucy Connaughton, Padraig lives in Clostoken, Loughrea, with his wife Helena and their daughter, Clara who was born in March. Music has always been a big part of his life and for some years, he performed locally with the West Coast Big Band.
He is delighted with this opportunity to feature in the Leisureland concert.
“To sing with an orchestra anywhere would be a dream and it would be a great thing for my little girl to hear in a few years that her old man was a singer and not just a man who works in a garage and farms”, he says.
Groove Tube with Cian O’Connell
Aileen Henderson has long been one of Galway’s most talented session vocalists, performing and recording with a huge variety of acts around the country. Her ability as a singer across styles and genres has seen her front an Irish tour featuring collaborators of Vulfpeck and the Bay City Rollers. And at times, the fullness of her performing schedule has made it difficult to focus on her original material – but that has started to change.
Last June, Aileen released her debut single, Lights Out – a refined, hook-heavy country pop effort that spelled the perfect introduction to her sound.
And its successor arrived last month. Just What I Need is anthemic, guitar-driven pop music that showcases the best of Aileen’s vocal style and ability to manipulate melody. She explains that arriving at this form of songwriting was about expanding her range and ultimately returning to the music she knows best.
“It’s very pop driven but also has country elements,” Aileen argues.
“I feel like that [sums up] my style perfectly at the moment. It’s quite straightforward – a love song that tells the story of a chaotic world where the only thing that’s needed is the company of a loved one. You could call it romanticist or however you want to interpret it.
“I’m inspired by a lot of country artists like Dolly Parton and Shania Twain, but I do listen to a very broad range of music. My Spotify is very random from Billie Eilish to Andrea Bocelli. I always played country music up until I was about 16 I’d say, and then I decided this is just not cool at all and I stopped for a while.
“I remember getting really into Katy Perry and trying to fit into that kind of style, and then I went to music college in BIMM. That definitely diverted me from country music for a while.”
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Arts Week with Judy Murphy
A range of arts organisations, including Bealtaine, the Polish Arts Festival, Brú Theatre and the Town Hall Theatre, will join forces from Thursday, April 28, to Saturday, May 6, to present work at the 14th annual Galway Theatre Festival.
The diverse productions will include drama, children’s theatre, comedy and workshops.
At the launch of the 2023 Festival in Druid’s Mick Lally Theatre on Tuesday evening, its Creative Director Aoife Noone said the event “offers something for everyone”, with audience being encouraged to “take a chance on something new and unexpected”.
She called on people to “explore new perspectives, challenge assumptions, and broaden our understanding of the world” via the festival, which, post-Covid, is celebrating “hope, resilience and the arts”.
Productions will include Conversations After Sex by THISISPOPBABY, winner of the Best New Play award at the 2021 Irish Theatre Awards; The Patient Gloria by Pan Pan, winner of the Scotsman Fringe First Award and Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; and The Examination by Brokentalkers, an award-winning production that explores mental health and human rights in the prison system.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
After more than four decades of performing on stage, the Tuam-based Marian Choral Society are embarking on their latest challenge, with plans to stage Evita in the autumn.
While they have announced details of the new production, they have yet to ringfence a cast for the epic. Auditions will take place over the coming weeks.
Chairperson Stuart Barrows told The Tribune that it was an exciting challenge for the group and expressed his delight that so many new members had joined the society.
The Marian Choral Society welcome back Ronan Lardner as Director for Evita, as well as Shane Farrell as Musical Director. And Jay Molyneux is on board for the first time as Choreographer for this production.
The musical will run from Tuesday, October 31, to Saturday, November 4, and will be staged in St Jarlath’s College Hall, Tuam.
The Marian Choral Society had never missed an annual production since their formation back in 1977 – until Covid struck. The pandemic meant that they had to abandon their plans for a couple of years – similar to other artistic groups.
Covid brought to an end a proud record of 43 consecutive productions, during which time they never missed a year. In fact, in 2013, they embarked on two shows to mark Tuam’s 400 celebrations.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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