In homes and schools all over the country, 4,000 young people are preparing for the annual Feis Ceoil classical music competition – the biggest in the festival calendar. ARMINTA WALLACEspeaks to some of this year's hopefuls
BALLYMOTE, CO SLIGO, is an attractive market town nestled among the hills and lakes of Ireland’s drumlin country. On a Sunday morning the broad street known locally as The Rock lies sleeping in the sun, deserted but for a handful of people buying newspapers. The post office is closed and across the road, so too is the Oriental Takeaway. Its neat facade is like that of dozens – perhaps hundreds – of Chinese restaurants around Ireland. But this month its owners, Henry and Dorothy Lai, aren’t just getting ready to supply chilli chicken and sesame prawn toasts to the town. They’re also getting ready for this year’s ESB Electric Ireland Feis Ceoil.
Their son Tommy (13) has been playing classical piano since he was seven. Already something of a Feis veteran, this year he’ll be playing Haydn, Chopin and Mendelssohn in the Rhona Marshall Cup. “It’s kind of nerve-wracking because there’s a load of people in the competition and you have to watch them play,” he says, as we settle down in the front room of the Lai family home . “But you get used to it after a while.”
Tommy is following in the footsteps of his older sister, 17-year-old Yvonne, who is in her first year at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Dance in Glasgow, with a view to becoming a concert pianist. Can Tommy remember how he got into music? “I saw the piano, so I just started messing,” he says. “And then I found I liked it.”
Put like that, it sounds easy. But getting ready for the Feis isn’t just about spending a couple of months memorising Mendelssohn. Tommy, who attends Coláiste Mhuire Secondary School in Ballymote, has been studying at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin since he was nine, which means making the three-hour journey there and back every Saturday.
When he was younger, his mother Dorothy used to drive him. Now he goes on the train. “I leave here at nine o’clock,” he says. “My lesson is at 12 and then I have a theory lesson at three. I get the train back at five o’clock.” Every Saturday.
So Tommy isn’t just confident, fluent and self-contained: he’s dedicated as well. “He’s okay,” says Dorothy, who’s plying me with tea and biscuits. Neither she nor her husband is particularly musical, but they figured piano lessons would give Yvonne and Tommy a bit of structure in their leisure time. “Keep them busy. Do something different, you know? Not always watch telly or play games,” she declares with a smile.
When Tommy arrives at the Feis Ceoil he’ll be one of approximately 4,000 young musicians who will come from all parts of the country to compete. Kayla McDonagh (18) is doing vocal studies at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in Rathmines.
Originally from Inverin in Galway, she began as a sean nós singer and also took acting lessons. Now, she hopes to make it in the world of opera. “My dad plays trad guitar and my grandad was a trained tenor and choral singer in England,” she says. “So there was always music in the house.”
McDonagh will compete in five competitions this year, singing everything from Thomas Moore to Handel.
“The Feis is the big one,” she says. “Right now, it’s ‘Feis season’ in college. Everyone is doing it.”
Good results at the Feis Ceoil make a vital mark on the CV of a young musician – but, McDonagh insists, you don’t have to win to do well. “If you get a good comment, that’s great too.” On the other hand, as she points out with a grin, “I wouldn’t be sitting here today with you if I hadn’t won the Rose Bowl two years ago.”
“Here” is a lively cafe bar, Toast, across the road from the college which is a regular watering-hole for students. Three friends who accompanied McDonagh to this particular gig have departed, all smiles at the idea of her doing an interview for the paper.
Will she be nervous, come the Feis? “I’ll be nervous, but it’s a good nervous,” she says. “If you’re not nervous you’re not emotionally attached, really. I mean, I’ll be having a heart attack for the first few hours in the morning. I’ll be on the phone to my parents in Galway, crying ‘I can’t warm up properly’. But then, 10 minutes before I’m supposed to sing, the excitement sets in. Right. Get this done. That’s how I am, anyway.”
For a singer, breathing techniques are a big part of the preparation. “There were 40 girls in the competition last year – and it can be intimidating listening to 40 other singers,” she says. “It’s not every day you’re in a room with people who are exactly the same age as you, and are singing exactly the same song as you. Probably prettier than you – if that matters. Could have been doing it for 10 years longer than you have. So breathing is a big thing to calm me down; just sitting there focusing on it, making sure it’s not going 90 miles an hour, helps.”
As a musician himself, does her father have any good advice in these situations? “My dad always tells me to just go with it. He always says, ‘You’re in college for a reason. You won two years ago for a reason. You have something different. Every singer does; a quality in the voice, a tone . . . ’ Once you get up to sing, though, it’s feet apart, back straight, done. The rest goes out the window.”
ON TUESDAY, APRIL 12TH, meanwhile, four buses will set out from Kilkenny for the RDS. They’ll be carrying 160 children from St Canice’s primary school, plus many of the school’s 13 music teachers and anything up to 100 parents. The children make up the school’s two orchestras: fourth- to sixth-class children are in the A orchestra, second- to fourth-class kids make up the B. “We leave here at about eight in the morning and we hit Liffey Valley at about 10,” says teacher Regina O’Leary, who has been bringing youngsters to the Feis Ceoil for more than a quarter of a century.
“They have two hours there, and they can either bring two packed lunches or buy lunch and bring a packed lunch for later on in the day. Their favourite shops are Clare’s Accessories and H&M, and Marks & Spencer to buy Percy Pigs [sweets]. I’ve given them Percy Pigs for years here – so they’re very famous in the school. Last year, they actually bought out every bag of pigs in Marks. There was nothing left.”
On arrival at the RDS, instruments and gear have to be carefully unpacked from the buses – among them 26 cellos, violins, trumpets, drums, and a couple of shopping trolleys full of music stands – and they get together for a practice run. “It’s fairly harum scarum, because there are no individual rooms or anything,” says Regina O’Leary. “All the orchestras just find a corner, and you get out your stuff and battle away against everyone else who’s playing at the same time.”
Last year was the 25th time St Canice’s competed at the Feis, but O’Leary was unable to accompany them; she was in St James’s Hospital having treatment for breast cancer. “They held up the mobile phone for me and I heard the two performances from my hospital bed. The little ones won, actually.
It was their debut performance in front of an audience and they were just so good that the adjudicator gave them the prize.” It was, she admits, an emotional moment – so she’s looking forward to this year’s outing more than ever before. “The Feis is definitely the highlight for us. It’s not even the competition, to be honest. We don’t care about winning or losing – it’s the whole day. The music is important, but it’s not the be all and end all.”
Back in Ballymote, Tommy Lai’s sister Yvonne – who’s home for her Easter break – has been entertaining me with tales of music studies in Glasgow; the impenetrable Scottish accents; the terror of improvisation classes; the student cafes. She plans to go with Tommy to the Feis, for moral support; she’s been there, knows the drill. Tommy doesn’t look as if he needs moral support, but he smiles anyhow.
Henry, meanwhile, has produced an enormous platter of Chinese food and is encouraging me to eat my own weight in skewered chicken, honey ribs and just about everything else from his menu. Before I go, I ask Tommy if he knows yet what he wants to do with his life. “I think I’ll stick with music,” he says.
Sounds like a pretty sound plan.
Feis facts
Feis forever
The Feis Ceoil is a competition for classical music, not trad. “People get quite confused because of the name, which is understandable,” says chief executive Laura Gilsenan. Founded in 1896, they’re reluctant to give up the name now.
Feis for a fiver
Every day during the Feis you can get a day ticket for €5 which allows you to nip in and out of all competitions on that day. Details of each day’s gigs will be posted on the website.
Feis for free
On Friday April 8th, live music day, entry is free. “That evening is the final of the John McCormack bursary, with up to six singers doing a 15- or 20-minute recital and somebody getting a big cheque for €8,000. We’d love a big audience to cheer them on,” says Gilsenan.
Feis finale
There’s a gala concert on April 16th at 7.30pm in the National Convention Centre. A family ticket (two adults plus two children under 18) costs €40.
The Celtic Tenors will perform, President Mary McAleese will be there, and the programme will feature Choir of the Year, chamber music, post-primary orchestras and soloists. “We also have an open slot so that if we come across a really outstanding performance, we can invite that person as well,” says Gilsenan.
The Feis Ceoil runs at the RDS, Dublin from Monday until April 15th. See feisceoil.ie
