Coole Music Orchestra Festival 10th Birthday Celebrations
The Coole Music Orchestra Festival was this year honoured with an Achievement Award at the National Concert Hall as part of the IAYO Festival of Youth Orchestras. Celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year, the Coole Music Orchestra Festival has brought thousands of young orchestral musicians, from all over Ireland and abroad, to the small town of Gort in County Galway.
Starting out as a Junior Orchestra Festival in 2008 with just 4 participating orchestras, it soon grew into a 2-concert format with 5 orchestras in each performance. The special feature of this festival has always been the Finale when all the orchestras join up in a combined festival orchestra and premiere a new work together which has been specially composed for the occasion.
These Finale pieces have seen up to 250 musicians performing together on stage and have taken different formats over the years. Sometimes the musicians surrounded the audience with bell ringers on platforms, sometimes they moved in choreographed patterns through the audience and for the 10th Anniversary, a group of skilled young dancers joined in from different parts of the auditorium. Originally inspired by the IAYO Youth Orchestra Festival, the festival organisers wanted to create something in the west of Ireland that gave young players the platform to share their music with each other and with an audience in a non-competitive and supportive way.
It has been an exciting journey over these past 10 years to see each aspect of the festival develop. The standard of playing has constantly risen; the interest of participation is still increasing every year and with the constant growth of the festival, a need for increased volunteer support from parent helpers. By now, a small army of around 50 Coole Music parents helps out every year to pull all the strings together from front-of-house jobs and parking stewards to stage management and raffle organisation. It has become a real community effort which is a celebration in itself. On a social level, the festival has seen friendships develop between participating musicians from different orchestras and networking ideas started when conductors met each other during the day of the festival and kicked off other projects.