Sundays @ noon

This Sundays@noon lunchtime concert at the Hugh Lane Gallery, in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Irland, features Irish mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty, who has been busy this last month singing Bach's St.Matthew Passion on tour in Holland, and J.A.Hasse's 'Marc Antonio e Cleopatra' in Moscow. She is also Artistic Partner to the newly-formed Irish National Opera. Sharon will be joined on this occasion by violinist Marja Gaynor, cellist Aoife Nic Athlaoich and harpsichordist Malcolm Proud.
The programme will include some beautiful arias by two of Germany's greatest baroque composers of sacred and operatic music, J.S.Bach and G.F.Handel, as well as featuring instrumental works by less well-known composers Muffat and Triemer. 
 
Mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty is an alumna of the RIAM Dublin, MDW Vienna, and the Oper Frankfurt Young Artists programme. Recent engagements include Sesto in Giulio Cesare (Theater Freiburg) Flora in La Traviata with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, Hänsel in Hänsel und Gretel (Landestheater Linz) Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte (Ministry of Operatic affairs, Belgium, Theater Freiburg, Theater Erfurt), Ottone in Handel’s Agrippina (Irish Youth Opera), Dido in Dido and Aeneas (Oper Frankfurt), Piacere in Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and Ariodante in Ariodante in Dublin with the IBO/OTC. Recordings include Gilbert & Cellier’s comic opera The Mountebanks with the BBC Concert Orchestra (2018 release on the Dutton label), and La Traviata on DVD with the NDR Radiophilhamonie alongside Thomas Hampson and Marina Rebeka.
 
Originally from Finland, Marja Gaynor is a Cork-based Baroque violinist. She plays with various Irish and European ensembles including Irish Baroque Orchestra, Camerata Kilkenny, Helsinki Baroque Orchestra, Musica Poetica, Ensemble Marsyas and Dunedin Consort. Gaynor is known as a versatile musician at home in different styles, a fluent improviser, as well as arranger and curator. She was the artistic director of East Cork Early Music Festival 2013-2015, and teaches Baroque violin and chamber music in CIT Cork School of Music.
 
Dublin born Aoife Nic Athlaoich enjoys a versatile musical career, equally at home playing on period instruments as performing newly commissioned works. She has collaborated with Jazz musicians and contemporary dance groups, as well as playing under the baton as such eminent conductors as Sir John Elliot Gardiner, Sir Colin Davis  and Bernard Haitink as an orchestral musician. Aoife has performed with the orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, la Serenissima, the avison ensemble, Irish baroque orchestra, Scottish chamber orchestra, classical opera company. London Mozart players and is a member of the irish chamber orchestra and the orchestre révolutionnaire et romantique. Aoife teaches cello at the Cork school of music.
 
Malcolm Proud won first prize at the Edinburgh International Harpsichord Competition in 1982 after a year of study with Gustav Leonhardt. He has performed as a soloist and continuo player throughout Europe, the U.S.A., Canada and Japan. Projects during 2018 include concerts with his ensemble Camerata Kilkenny in Belgium, Germany (Handel Festival, Halle) and Finland, and with Swedish soprano Maria Keohane in Italy, Switzerland and Austria. In November he will curate a series of concerts at the National Concert Hall in Dublin to mark the 350th anniversary of François Couperin’s birth. He is principal continuo player with the Irish Baroque Orchestra. Malcolm Proud is supported by Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by The Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Music Network is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.
 
Admission is free, guests may make a donation to the concert series if they so wish. Early attendance is advised to secure a seat.
 
Supported by the Goethe-Institut Irland, the Arts Council, the Hugh Lane Gallery and Dublin City Council.