With the MTV European Music Awards this weekend, hundreds of concertgoers will enjoy music of a different kind today (2 November) as part of Belfast Music Week, when Craigavon flautist Eimear McGeown makes her Ulster Orchestra début at the Orchestra’s popular JTI Lunchtime Concert in city centre’s Assembly Buildings.
This Season, the Lunchtime Concerts have a ‘Home Grown’ talent theme and celebrate local musicians who have established a growing international reputation. Eimear, who is from Drumglass in Craigavon, will play Ibert’s Flute Concerto in an all-French concert called Après-Midi, which takes place at 1.05pm.
Looking forward to the concert, the UO’s Head of Marketing and Development, Lydia Gamble said, “Our first Lunchtime concert of the new Season last month was one of the best attended. The Series itself, which began in 2009, has proved popular with regular concertgoers, shoppers, city centre workers and visitors from outside the city, especially since the cost is about the same as a cinemar ticket.”
Après-Midi is the first lunchtime concert not to take place in the Ulster Hall and Lydia Gamble hoped that concertgoers would remember that the concert is in the Assembly Buildings which was formerly known as the Spires Centre. “We had to make the Ulster Hall available to the organisers of the MTV European Music Awards, so the concert is now taking place at the Assembly Buildings, but will still start at 1.05pm and teh concert will last 50 minutes like always.”
Eimear McGeown was ‘Best Performer’ by unanimous vote at the Sir James Galway International Masterclasses in Switzerland in 2009 and has won many awards. “I love the energy that the piece has,” she said. “The first movement has such a great start; it captures everyone’s attention straight away and is so rhythmically exciting.
“Then the second movement is so beautiful and also quite sad in contrast to the first movement. Apparently it was written on the death of his father. Then the last movement is a great big ball of excitement with an explosive end!” Eimear explained.
The conductor for the Lunchtime concert is Christopher Wilkins from Boston, who makes his UK, Irish and Ulster Orchestra début’s all in the one day. “The Concert features wonderfully vibrant French music that lies just outside of the standard repertoire,” he said.
“The challenge for me will be to find what is unique about each piece, how it sets an individual mood or is suggestive of the place it describes. But I have always felt, the Ibert Flute Concerto to be one of the most entertaining of all 20th Century wind concertos.”
This year two Ulster Orchestra concerts are part of the 170 gigs and performances that make up Belfast Music Week. The second, with Nikolai Demidenko, takes place on Saturday 5 November at the Whitlay Hall when he plays Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 in an all Russian concert – Russian Colours. Tickets are still available.