Irish Times Notes
Church of Ireland Notes from ‘The Irish Times’
New Music Director for Cork
St Fin Barre’s cathedral, Cork has announced the appointment of Mr Peter Stobart as the Cathedral’s new Director of Music. Mr Stobart will take over from the current Director, Mr Malcolm Wisener, who is retiring at the end of September.
Mr Stobart began his career as the organ scholar of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and as organ scholar in Durham University where he read music and also directed the University Chamber Choir. After graduating, he sang as a tenor Lay Clerk in Peterborough cathedral choir and he conducted the chamber choir St Peter’s Singers, and the Peterborough Children’s Choir.
For the last eight years he has been working in London where he studied choral conducting for two years at the Royal Academy of Music. He has been the Head of Extra–Curricular Music at St Dunstan’s College, Catford for the last six years and directed the Southampton University Chamber Choir, the A Cappella Singers of Weybridge, and the vocal chamber group Novem Altare. He will also be leaving his current post of Director of Music and Organist at Christ Church, East Sheen, London.
Mr Stobart is a choral specialist who has led workshops and choral days with singers of all ages. He has recently sung solo roles in performances of Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s St John Passion and Magnificat, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem, Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers and Orff’s Carmina Burana. He has also been a regular deputy singer at Westminster Abbey.
In 2014 he became the Artistic Director for the Voices of Hangzhou Youth Choir based in a large city near Shanghai. He ran a summer school there during July and August 2014 for fifty children aged 8 to 16 and performed on Chinese National Day. He will return in next month to expand the work of the choir there.
Another new recruit is Mr Peter Cheney who has joined the Church of Ireland Press Office as the new Assistant Press Officer this week. Peter has come to the post from agendaNi and eolas magazines where he has worked for the past eight years as a journalist and as Deputy Editor. Before this, he spent two years as a journalist at the County Down Outlook and he has contributed to both the Church of Ireland Gazette and to the Presbyterian Church’s Reach Out magazine. He is an active member of Willowfield Parish, Belfast.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning at 11.45am RTE radio will broadcast a Parish Eucharist from St Lasarian’s cathedral, Old Leighlin, where the celebrant will be Archdeacon Robin Bantry White and the preacher the Very Revd Tom Gordon, Dean of Leighlin.
At 4pm the annual Open Air Service will be held at Clonmacnoise where the preacher will be the Archdeacon of Meath & Kildare, the Ven,. Leslie Stevenson while at 7.30pm there will be a ‘Summer Praise’ service in St Moling’s church, Monamolin, Co. Wexford, with a collection in aid of the Church Renovation Fund.
The lunchtime recital in St Mary’s cathedral, Limerick, on Wednesday will be given by Rebecca & James Warren on violin and viola who will pay work by Dvorak, Smetana, Mozart and Part.
On Friday there will be a lunchtime recital of renaissance and medieval vocal and instrumental consort music with mezzo–soprano, Sharon Carty and the Vuenv Recorder Consort in Sandford parish church, Ranleagh, at 1.10pm, while in the evening in Castletownshend Ivan Ilic will give a piano recital of works by Bach, Chopin, Anton Reicha, Godowsky and Rachmaninoff in St Barrahane’s church.
Church of Ireland Notes from ‘The Irish Times’