Sligo Baroque Festival 2009
Baroque Festival begins with Bach and will end by exploring new areas with Concerto Caledonia

Welcome to the Sligo Festival of Baroque Music 2009. Under the Directorship of Rod Alston, the 14th Festival of Baroque Music will open on Thursday 1st October with an orchestral concert given by The Irish Baroque Orchestra under Garry Cooper in The Methodist Church in Sligo.

Between the sublime music of the first concert, and the rediscoveries of the last, the Festival offers much that should be of equal delight to the general music-lover and the Period Performance buff. The Opening cocnert with The Irish Baroque Orchestra will include concertos for harpsichord, violin and oboe, and recorders by Bach and the B minor four violin concerto by Vivaldi. Bach is the end point of Walter Reiter’s fascinating exploration of the Baroque Violin Sonata (Friday evening), and also the ensemble, La Recreation’s programme on Saturday evening which unusually brings together the two different flutes in normal use in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

This celebration of music-making from the Baroque Era not only includes performers with an established international reputation, but also young performers from Ireland, and indeed Sligo.

Concerto Caledonia is Scotland’s leading early music group, bringing to life the classical and traditional music of the nation’s history. The group’s seven CD recordings include Robert Burns songs in their original versions, classical symphonies from Fife, early Scots fiddle music, and the unique sound of 18th-century Scottish-Italian crossover. Its contemporary recordings include music by Frank Zappa, Astor Piazzolla, Daniel Johnston and The Buzzcocks.  The album Mungrel Stuff was a Sunday Times Record of the Year, and besides appearing regularly on BBC Radio 3, the group has also been broadcast on Radios 1, 2 & 4. Recent live collaborations include Bach’s St John Passion with guest director Mark Padmore, dub reggae Burns songs with Karen Matheson and Future Pilot AKA, the story of Orpheus with extreme cabaret trio The Tiger Lillies at the Edinburgh International Festival, an evening with songwriters Michael Marra and Karine Polwart, and a programme of Janis Joplin songs with soprano Lisa Milne. The group’s latest project, part of its residency at Perth Concert Hall, is the formation of an all-star Scottish Dance Band, to play music from Scottish traditions other the usual fiddle-accordion one.  The group’s latest projects include the formation of an all-star Scottish Dance Band; the release of a ‘red’ 7" vinyl single of Daniel Johnston's Walking the Cow and the Buzzcocks Boredom; a tour to Denmark with the return of ‘A tribute to Monteverdi (of sorts)’ with the Tiger Lillies, and The Caledonia Sessions  : a four concert series at the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival.

Concerto Caledonia presents a programme around its Scottish-Canadian links and here the lines between music genres tend to get a bit blurred. Baroque and Scottish music are the main root elements. Eighteenth-century Scottish music in particular cries out for an unusually large and unconventional palette of stylistic interpretations, because its very nature defies classification as either folk or art music.