12 June 2016 at 20:00

Cantando, Orla Barry (director)

John O'Keeffe (organ)

Cantando is a mixed-voiced chamber choir founded over 25 years ago by its director Órla Barry. A highly accomplished and versatile group, Cantando sings in a variety of styles and genres. Its repertoire ranges from medieval and renaissance through to modern and contemporary, with a particular focus on a capella works. The choir has performed in most of the major concert venues around Ireland, including the National Concert Hall and St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. It has taken part in national and international competitions at home and abroad. It was the first Irish choir to achieve a gold award at the Verona International Choral Festival; it was also a finalist in the Moore Stephens International Festival in Jersey and National Choir of the Cork Choral Festival, and won in numerous categories at Cork, Sligo, Arklow, Navan, New Ross and Dundalk. At the invitation of the Irish Ambassador to Lithuania the singers travelled in March of this year to Vilnius, where they gave several concerts to celebrate St Patrick’s Day. Cantando has made a number of recordings, including several broadcasts for RTÉ and a double CD of contemporary church music, I Sing for Joy. It has also released its own CD, The Time of Christemas.

Órla Barry, Cantando’s founder and director, is a graduate of University College Dublin and the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, Ohio in the USA. She has worked extensively as a singer, conductor and teacher both here in Ireland and in the United States. She directed Dublin’s famous Palestrina Choir at the Pro-Cathedral for over five years and has served as guest conductor for Chamber Choir Ireland (formally the National Chamber Choir) on several occasions. Órla has also been guest director of the annual Church Music Summer School of the Irish Church Music Association many times. She has adjudicated at national choral competitions and has taught conducting technique and practice at Maynooth University. She is head of music at St Raphaela’s Secondary School, Kilmacud in Dublin.

John O’Keeffe is director of sacred music at the National Seminary of St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, where his duties include lecturing, training of cantors, choir and organists, and the preparation of music for college liturgies. As Maynooth University’s director of choral groups, he conducts the University Choral Society and oversees the activities of the Maynooth Chamber Choir, the Maynooth Schola Gregoriana (a joint SPCM/MU project) and the MU ladies’ choir, Altus. Prior to his appointment to Maynooth, he was choirmaster at St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford, having already served as organ scholar of Westminster Cathedral and Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral. His organ teachers have included Rev. Frank McNamara, David Sanger, Ben Van Oosten and Gerard Gillen. He holds master’s degrees in organ (MU) and chant performance (University of Limerick), and his doctoral thesis was on the liturgical output of Seán and Peadar Ó Riada. Active as a liturgical composer (his Mass of Saint Mel was commissioned to mark the restoration of Longford Cathedral), he directs postgraduate and diploma courses in liturgical music and chant at both SPCM and MU.

Matthew Hébert is a native of the green mountains of Vermont in the United States. He played instruments from an early age. He came up through the music programmes of elementary schools and wind band programmes of high school in that state, and is very thankful for this early influential training. He accepted a performance scholarship at the Florida State University, where he studied under Patrick Meighan. He received his master’s degree in music theory from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and worked towards his PhD there before marrying a Dubliner and relocating to Ireland. He is an alumnus of many performance workshops given by Sigurd Raschèr, Lee Patrick, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet and others. He has performed in the southern US, New England, Japan and his new home of Ireland.