Finola Merivale: A virtual homecoming for West Cork music festival
Finola Merivale.
Chatting to Finola Merivale at her home in New York over a Zoom call, I appear to have entered the hyper reality of scenes from those popular TV ads for Barry's tea. In this world, a creative soul leaves her native Cork to travel the globe, stopping off in Hong Kong to teach English, sidestepping into Java, Indonesia to study gamelan percussion.
Our protagonist then weathers the autumn months of lockdown with a sojourn in Paris before settling in Manhattan to surf the contemporary music scene as a Dean’s Fellow at the prestigious Columbia University. I have missed an episode here and there, but this is the real-life story of Finola Merivale, a 34-year-old composer from Inniscarra, Co Cork.
