The Daniel Corkery Summer School - Inchigeelagh 2006

The organisers of the Summer-School
Katherine Barratt, Joe Creedon, Douglas Gill & Ursula Williams

Landscape Painting Workshop
Artist/Tutor Marlise Barnsdorf	The workshop produced many fine pictures, these are only a small sample.

The Concert

Wednesday night's concert featured Abigail Sudbury (soprano) and Christina Rhys (harp) Who performed a programme of songs and music of diverse styles, by composers who included Mozart, Britten and Faure.

Christina has featured as a soloist in many parts of the world, and has worked with many leading symphony and chamber orchestras. She is also a music therapist for the Acorn Childrens' Hospice Trust.

Abigail is training in London, she has recently played 1st Lady in Mozart's Die Zauberflote and will be playing Micaela in Carmen in 2007.

Christina's harp is of German manufacture and about 30 years old. It is a work of art in itself.

Choral Workshop

On the Friday evening the choir performed a mass, specially written by choirmaster Tom Shorter, in St.Finbarr and all Angels Church, Inchigeelagh. accompanied by Christina Rhys (harp).

Lectures

This year's lectures included one by Prof. Julian Petkowski (photo right) entitled "A Devilish Affair". It concerned the mutiny of the Connacht Regiment, a unit of the British Army, in India in the years immediately following the Great War (1914-18)

Other lectures were by Patrick Maume (Corkery's biographer) on Corkery's Nationalist credentials and by Colbert Kearney on "the Short Stories of Daniel Corkery".

Unfortunately Miriam O'Donovan who was going to talk on the "Women of 1916" was hospitalised and unable to attend. We wish her a very swift recovery.

Local History Tour

On Wednesday afternoon history students took a coach trip to local sites associated with the landed gentry of the area in the period of the War of Independance. The trip was led by local historian Micheal Galvin who talked about local "families" and their attitudes and actions during that period.

The illustration, left, shows not a medieval castle, but a mausoleum built by the Beamish family of brewing fame in 1857. The old photograph below depicts Ryecroft as it was before it was burnt by Volunteers.