Pierrot Ensembles: Exploring the Pocket Orchestras

Michigan Room, The Drake

Just as the string quartet, piano trio, and other chamber ensembles are performed widely, the Pierrot ensemble is part of chamber music's fabric. In this session, hear from Eighth Blackbird and renowned composer Jonathan Bailey Holland about this fascinating ensemble makeup and how it has paved the way for ensembles of unique instrumentation.

The 2026 National Flute Association Closing Gala celebrates the artistry and community of the flute world through performances by Lina Andonovska, Timothy Hagen, Julien Beaudiment, Sebastijan Bereta, and Suzanne Teng. Highlights include the combined Professional and High School Flute Choirs under the direction of Cassandra Eisenreich, the world premiere of Aaron Hedenstrom’s arrangement of Bučimiš, and a featured work by this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Matthias Ziegler, alongside the presentation of major NFA awards and competition results. Following the closing ceremonies, all flutists are invited to join a joyful mass performance of Bach’s Air, open to flutists of all levels and instruments. Matthias Ziegler's performance is supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Lina Andonovska presents an all-contemporary program featuring original works by Ring, Feery, Dean, Fujikura, and Lim

Elizabeth McNutt, Mary Kay Fink, and Lina Andonovska perform the 2026 NFA commissioned works by Jean Ahn, Lisa Bost-Sandberg, and Shawn E. Okpebholo. A Q and A with the composers will follow the concert, moderated by Leanna Keith, chair of the New Music Advisory Committee. Support provided by Laurie Sokoloff

World Premiere - Presented in association with Galway International Arts Festival 

An intimate and powerful meditation on memory, grief and truth, this provocative chamber opera composed by Tarik O’Regan with a libretto by Colm Tóibín adapted from his novella The Testament of Mary, unfolds in the final years of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Past and present coexist uneasily as Mary moves between two worlds, reliving her son’s final days while exiled and silenced years later. Around her, pivotal moments from their lives emerge and dissolve, tracing the fragile boundary between lived experience and remembered truth.

Irish GRAMMY Award nominee Elaine Kellyconducts Irish National Opera’s Testament. Rachael Hewer (The Flying Dutchman 2025) directs, with set design by Francis O'Connor, costume design by Joan O'Clery, lighting design by Kevin Treacy, sound design by David Sheppard and choreography by Emma Woods.

World Premiere - Presented in association with Galway International Arts Festival 

An intimate and powerful meditation on memory, grief and truth, this provocative chamber opera composed by Tarik O’Regan with a libretto by Colm Tóibín adapted from his novella The Testament of Mary, unfolds in the final years of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Past and present coexist uneasily as Mary moves between two worlds, reliving her son’s final days while exiled and silenced years later. Around her, pivotal moments from their lives emerge and dissolve, tracing the fragile boundary between lived experience and remembered truth.

Irish GRAMMY Award nominee Elaine Kellyconducts Irish National Opera’s Testament. Rachael Hewer (The Flying Dutchman 2025) directs, with set design by Francis O'Connor, costume design by Joan O'Clery, lighting design by Kevin Treacy, sound design by David Sheppard and choreography by Emma Woods.

World Premiere - Presented in association with Galway International Arts Festival 

An intimate and powerful meditation on memory, grief and truth, this provocative chamber opera composed by Tarik O’Regan with a libretto by Colm Tóibín adapted from his novella The Testament of Mary, unfolds in the final years of Mary, mother of Jesus.

Past and present coexist uneasily as Mary moves between two worlds, reliving her son’s final days while exiled and silenced years later. Around her, pivotal moments from their lives emerge and dissolve, tracing the fragile boundary between lived experience and remembered truth.

Irish GRAMMY Award nominee Elaine Kellyconducts Irish National Opera’s Testament. Rachael Hewer (The Flying Dutchman 2025) directs, with set design by Francis O'Connor, costume design by Joan O'Clery, lighting design by Kevin Treacy, sound design by David Sheppard and choreography by Emma Woods.

This concert is part of a project created by composer, Ian Wilson, the contemporary music choir, New Dublin Voices, and flautist Lina Andonovska. Ian Wilson has composed, especially for this concert, a short work based on texts by Serbian composer Draginja Adamović. The main work is Luigi Nono’s ‘Das atmende Klarsein’, which has never been heard in Ireland before this project. It is a major work from his last decade, the libretto made from fragments of texts including Rilke’s Duino Elegies. It is particularly exciting to welcome Bernie Sherlock and the fantastic Dublin New Voices on their first visit to Bantry.

A fully improvised live performance experience, where music, drawing and movement interact in real time - creating a truly unique experience where nothing is fixed in advance.

Performers move freely among the audience, weaving violin, viola, flutes, percussion and trombone into a soundscape that feels both contemporary and nostalgic. On a large screen: a fluid, hypnotic, bio-digital world is created using custom-built software that responds symbiotically to the evolving music and movement.

Every performance is distinct, and the audience is integral to this shared, multi-sensory creative process where sound, image, gesture and atmosphere emerge in response to the present moment.

Fingerprints is part of ongoing collaborative research that explores drawing as a responsive system shaped by sound, movement and live performance. At its core is a custom-built computational drawing system that reacts in real time to acoustic instruments and gesture. Rather than treating audio and video as simple control signals, it is tuned to register nuance (intensity, articulation, rhythm, and texture) so that marks emerge through interaction and improvisation.

The resulting visuals are residue rather than representation - records of interaction over time. In this context, “fingerprints” refers not to biometrics, but to the human specificity of live performance: timing, touch, hesitation and collaboration - traces of decisions made together in the moment.

With Ioana Petcu-Colan (violin/viola), Steve Meyfroidt (visuals), Lina Andonovska (flutes), Alex Petcu (percussion), Ross Lyness (trombone) and Davide Marinelli (dance/movement)

Supported by an MTU Arts Office Create Le Chéile Arts Project Award.

A fully improvised live performance experience, where music, drawing and movement interact in real time - creating a truly unique experience where nothing is fixed in advance.

Performers move freely among the audience, weaving violin, viola, flutes, percussion and trombone into a soundscape that feels both contemporary and nostalgic. On a large screen: a fluid, hypnotic, bio-digital world is created using custom-built software that responds symbiotically to the evolving music and movement.

Every performance is distinct, and the audience is integral to this shared, multi-sensory creative process where sound, image, gesture and atmosphere emerge in response to the present moment.

Fingerprints is part of ongoing collaborative research that explores drawing as a responsive system shaped by sound, movement and live performance. At its core is a custom-built computational drawing system that reacts in real time to acoustic instruments and gesture. Rather than treating audio and video as simple control signals, it is tuned to register nuance (intensity, articulation, rhythm, and texture) so that marks emerge through interaction and improvisation.

The resulting visuals are residue rather than representation - records of interaction over time. In this context, “fingerprints” refers not to biometrics, but to the human specificity of live performance: timing, touch, hesitation and collaboration - traces of decisions made together in the moment.

With Ioana Petcu-Colan (violin/viola), Steve Meyfroidt (visuals), Lina Andonovska (flutes), Alex Petcu (percussion), Ross Lyness (trombone) and Davide Marinelli (dance/movement)

Supported by an MTU Arts Office Create Le Chéile Arts Project Award.

In the hauntingly beautiful world of Bellini’s Norma, a Druid high priestess is torn between her sacred vows and forbidden love for an enemy commander. Norma has secretly had two children with her Roman lover, but when he turns his affections to another, his betrayal ignites a harrowing chain of events, forcing her to contemplate unthinkable revenge.

From the iconic aria “Casta diva” to the opera’s devastating finale, Bellini’s score is a masterwork of bel canto brilliance with some of opera’s most emotionally charged music. Every note reveals the raw, human cost of love and sacrifice.

Georgian soprano Salome Jicia sings Norma, a tour de force role of vocal artistry made famous by Maria Callas. Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang (La traviata 2024), described by the New York Times as “a born bel canto tenor” is Pollione, the Roman commander.

Norma is conducted by Maurizio Benini. Long-time INO collaborator Orpha Phelan (La bohème 2023, Don Pasquale 2022 & Cinderella 2019) directs, with set & costume design by Madeleine Boyd. Featuring the Irish National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Norma is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

Ian Wilson: Adam’s Rib (world première)
Luigi Nono: Das atmende Klarsein (Irish première)

DICMF is proud to collaborate with composer Ian Wilson and West Cork Music in the presentation of Luigi Nono’s profound and rarely performed masterpiece, Das atmende klarsein. Composed for small choir, bass flute, tape and live electronics, Das atmende klarsein features flautist Lina Andonovska and New Dublin Voices under the direction of Bernie Sherlock.

This significant and ethereal work, receiving its Irish première in the spectacular setting of Dublin Castle’s Chapel Royal, is performed alongside a new work by Wilson, Adam’s Rib, which sets texts by Serbian composer Draginja Adamović – terse, hallucinatory poems in which time unravels and reality fractures into images both cosmic and broken, intimate and unafraid of the dark.

Funded by an Arts Council Music Project Award

In the hauntingly beautiful world of Bellini’s Norma, a Druid high priestess is torn between her sacred vows and forbidden love for an enemy commander. Norma has secretly had two children with her Roman lover, but when he turns his affections to another, his betrayal ignites a harrowing chain of events, forcing her to contemplate unthinkable revenge.

From the iconic aria “Casta diva” to the opera’s devastating finale, Bellini’s score is a masterwork of bel canto brilliance with some of opera’s most emotionally charged music. Every note reveals the raw, human cost of love and sacrifice.

Georgian soprano Salome Jicia sings Norma, a tour de force role of vocal artistry made famous by Maria Callas. Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang (La traviata 2024), described by the New York Times as “a born bel canto tenor” is Pollione, the Roman commander.

Norma is conducted by Maurizio Benini. Long-time INO collaborator Orpha Phelan (La bohème 2023, Don Pasquale 2022 & Cinderella 2019) directs, with set & costume design by Madeleine Boyd. Featuring the Irish National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Norma is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

In the hauntingly beautiful world of Bellini’s Norma, a Druid high priestess is torn between her sacred vows and forbidden love for an enemy commander. Norma has secretly had two children with her Roman lover, but when he turns his affections to another, his betrayal ignites a harrowing chain of events, forcing her to contemplate unthinkable revenge.

From the iconic aria “Casta diva” to the opera’s devastating finale, Bellini’s score is a masterwork of bel canto brilliance with some of opera’s most emotionally charged music. Every note reveals the raw, human cost of love and sacrifice.

Georgian soprano Salome Jicia sings Norma, a tour de force role of vocal artistry made famous by Maria Callas. Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang (La traviata 2024), described by the New York Times as “a born bel canto tenor” is Pollione, the Roman commander.

Norma is conducted by Maurizio Benini. Long-time INO collaborator Orpha Phelan (La bohème 2023, Don Pasquale 2022 & Cinderella 2019) directs, with set & costume design by Madeleine Boyd. Featuring the Irish National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Norma is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

A Gala Concert with Rolando Villazón and Paula Murrihy.

Irish National Opera brings together two world-famous artists for an evening of vocal fireworks and rapturous music in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. 

With his trademark charisma and “grandezza, elegance and power” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón has thrilled audiences across the globe with soaring tenor arias that combine passion, lyricism and irresistible charm. Renowned for his electrifying stage presence and heartfelt artistry, Villazón is hailed by The Times as “the most charming of today’s divos”.  

Alongside him, celebrated Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy, a homegrown star with a luminous international career, showcases her radiant tone and expressive vocal talent. Equally at home in moments of intimate stillness or blazing intensity, The Irish Times has praised her thrilling presence while The Guardian has lauded her “immaculate sense of line… and dazzling colouratura technique”.  

In the hauntingly beautiful world of Bellini’s Norma, a Druid high priestess is torn between her sacred vows and forbidden love for an enemy commander. Norma has secretly had two children with her Roman lover, but when he turns his affections to another, his betrayal ignites a harrowing chain of events, forcing her to contemplate unthinkable revenge.

From the iconic aria “Casta diva” to the opera’s devastating finale, Bellini’s score is a masterwork of bel canto brilliance with some of opera’s most emotionally charged music. Every note reveals the raw, human cost of love and sacrifice.

Georgian soprano Salome Jicia sings Norma, a tour de force role of vocal artistry made famous by Maria Callas. Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang (La traviata 2024), described by the New York Times as “a born bel canto tenor” is Pollione, the Roman commander.

Norma is conducted by Maurizio Benini. Long-time INO collaborator Orpha Phelan (La bohème 2023, Don Pasquale 2022 & Cinderella 2019) directs, with set & costume design by Madeleine Boyd. Featuring the Irish National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Norma is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

In the hauntingly beautiful world of Bellini’s Norma, a Druid high priestess is torn between her sacred vows and forbidden love for an enemy commander. Norma has secretly had two children with her Roman lover, but when he turns his affections to another, his betrayal ignites a harrowing chain of events, forcing her to contemplate unthinkable revenge.

From the iconic aria “Casta diva” to the opera’s devastating finale, Bellini’s score is a masterwork of bel canto brilliance with some of opera’s most emotionally charged music. Every note reveals the raw, human cost of love and sacrifice.

Georgian soprano Salome Jicia sings Norma, a tour de force role of vocal artistry made famous by Maria Callas. Guatemalan tenor Mario Chang (La traviata 2024), described by the New York Times as “a born bel canto tenor” is Pollione, the Roman commander.

Norma is conducted by Maurizio Benini. Long-time INO collaborator Orpha Phelan (La bohème 2023, Don Pasquale 2022 & Cinderella 2019) directs, with set & costume design by Madeleine Boyd. Featuring the Irish National Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

Norma is sung in Italian with English surtitles.

Featuring the music of Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Eighth Blackbird and San Fermin explore a world where every conclusion is a catalyst, and the end is simply the beginning.

Beginning with a short work for solo piano entitled “Farewell,” this program begins with an ending. But just as any end brings a new beginning, this is a celebration of music’s ability to create beauty from brokenness and community from loss. Gradually, the group of performers grows: first, in a duet for flute and vibraphone entitled “Free Dive” that conjures a breathless plummet into deep water and the hallucinogenic state that divers describe upon reaching the bottom. Next, a trio for violin, cello, and piano called Past Life that imagines the changing life of a sacred space over many years. The first half of the concert culminates in the world premiere of a new work for the full sextet by Ellis Ludwig-Leone, written for this occasion. The second half of the program sees Eighth Blackbird joined by Ludwig-Leone’s band San Fermin, performing songs from their most recent album Arms, which was written by Ludwig-Leone during a tumultuous period following a couple of breakups. Hailed as “masters of highbrow chamber pop” by Rolling Stone, San Fermin’s music lends itself equally well to the concert hall or the festival stage. In this intimate evening of chamber music and songs, genre distinctions are disregarded in favor of storytelling, and a recognition of the alchemical power of music to transform loss into something life-affirming and communal. What emerges is not a linear arc but a cycle—an ending that generates motion, a farewell that becomes the energy required to begin again.

Diatribe Records present a double-bill of ‘Wind Songs’, a collection of string and voice duos by composer Garth Knox, alongside Sky Rivers, a new wind trio composed of Li-chin Li, Lina Andonovska and Nick Roth.

Kinetic Machine: Designed to work, run, dive, and fly, operating relentlessly forward. An engine that is switched on and can’t be stopped, with the consequences of unfolding cause and effect. Music engineered with the interlocking gears of Reich. Set in motion by Guthrie, Ludwig-Leone, and Lang. The program is the system of an impossible machine all propelled forward by Eighth Blackbird.

Program:

Steve Reich: Piano Phase (1967)

April Dawn Guthrie: Boarding School Run (2024)

Ellis Ludwig-Leone: Free Dive (2023)

Steve Reich: 4 Organs (1970)

David Lang: Learn To Fly (2019)

New York tenor Ryan Capozzo is the Prince, with American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as the witch Ježibaba and Croatian bass Ante Jerkunica as Rusalka's father, Vodník. Soprano Giselle Allen is the Foreign Princess with baritone Benjamin Russell as the Gamekeeper. Completing the ensemble are sopranos Rachel Croash and Sarah Richmond and mezzo-soprano Alexandra Urquiola as the Wood Nymphs.

Direction and design are by the visionary Netia Jones, who co-created and directed INO’s Olivier award nominated Least Like The Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy. INO’s Artistic Director Fergus Sheil conducts the INO Orchestra and Chorus.

New York tenor Ryan Capozzo is the Prince, with American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as the witch Ježibaba and Croatian bass Ante Jerkunica as Rusalka's father, Vodník. Soprano Giselle Allen is the Foreign Princess with baritone Benjamin Russell as the Gamekeeper. Completing the ensemble are sopranos Rachel Croash and Sarah Richmond and mezzo-soprano Alexandra Urquiola as the Wood Nymphs.

Direction and design are by the visionary Netia Jones, who co-created and directed INO’s Olivier award nominated Least Like The Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy. INO’s Artistic Director Fergus Sheil conducts the INO Orchestra and Chorus.

Solo recital featuring a mix of early and modern flute repertoire. Programme TBC.

New York tenor Ryan Capozzo is the Prince, with American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as the witch Ježibaba and Croatian bass Ante Jerkunica as Rusalka's father, Vodník. Soprano Giselle Allen is the Foreign Princess with baritone Benjamin Russell as the Gamekeeper. Completing the ensemble are sopranos Rachel Croash and Sarah Richmond and mezzo-soprano Alexandra Urquiola as the Wood Nymphs.

Direction and design are by the visionary Netia Jones, who co-created and directed INO’s Olivier award nominated Least Like The Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy. INO’s Artistic Director Fergus Sheil conducts the INO Orchestra and Chorus.

New York tenor Ryan Capozzo is the Prince, with American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as the witch Ježibaba and Croatian bass Ante Jerkunica as Rusalka's father, Vodník. Soprano Giselle Allen is the Foreign Princess with baritone Benjamin Russell as the Gamekeeper. Completing the ensemble are sopranos Rachel Croash and Sarah Richmond and mezzo-soprano Alexandra Urquiola as the Wood Nymphs.

Direction and design are by the visionary Netia Jones, who co-created and directed INO’s Olivier award nominated Least Like The Other, Searching for Rosemary Kennedy. INO’s Artistic Director Fergus Sheil conducts the INO Orchestra and Chorus.

Experience the world premiere of Performance Fingerprints, an immersive live event where music and visual art meet in spontaneous conversation.

Drop by The Crush at 3.15pm or 6.15pm for a free pop-up performance where visual artist Heidi Nguyen free-paints and draws in real time as musicians perform entirely from their imaginations. Each performance runs for approximately 30 minutes.

Then join us in our Upstairs Theatre for a ticketed, immersive experience. Musicians move among the seated audience, weaving the tones and textures of flutes, violin, viola, trombone, and percussion into a fully improvised soundscape that feels both contemporary and nostalgic. On a large screen, visual artist Steve Meyfroidt shapes fluid, bio-digital worlds using custom-built software, responding symbiotically to the evolving music.

Nothing is pre-determined. Every performance is unique, and you, the audience, are an integral part of a shared creative process where multi-sensory art is shaped and experienced in the moment.

Experience the world premiere of Performance Fingerprints, an immersive live event where music and visual art meet in spontaneous conversation.

Drop by The Crush at 3.15pm or 6.15pm for a free pop-up performance where visual artist Heidi Nguyen free-paints and draws in real time as musicians perform entirely from their imaginations. Each performance runs for approximately 30 minutes.

Then join us in our Upstairs Theatre for a ticketed, immersive experience. Musicians move among the seated audience, weaving the tones and textures of flutes, violin, viola, trombone, and percussion into a fully improvised soundscape that feels both contemporary and nostalgic. On a large screen, visual artist Steve Meyfroidt shapes fluid, bio-digital worlds using custom-built software, responding symbiotically to the evolving music.

Nothing is pre-determined. Every performance is unique, and you, the audience, are an integral part of a shared creative process where multi-sensory art is shaped and experienced in the moment.