'When you get knocked down, keep on going': Three of the competitors in Feis Ceoil 125
From top, Aoibhin Keogh Daly, Emily Crowley, and Abbie Palliser-Kehoe.
One of the biggest casualties of the 2020 cultural calendar was the Feis Ceoil, an annual jamboree that involves thousands of aspiring classical musicians from all over Ireland. A letter to the Evening Telegraph complaining ‘of the neglect of Irish music and musicians is credited with being the spur that galvanised a committee to mount the first festival with inaugural concerts in Dublin and Belfast in 1897.
Initial plans to rotate between Dublin, Belfast and Cork foundered and the festival is long established at its base at the RDS in Dublin. Almost every professional Irish classical musician has cut their teeth at the Feis Ceoil, most famously John McCormack who won a Gold Medal for the Tenor Competition in 1903. Sopranos Mary Hegarty and the late Cara O’Sullivan notched up successes early in their careers there.
