Gerry Harrington & Margaret Rhatigan playing at Sligo Bus Station

We held our first Live Lunch today, much to the bemusement and delight of the bus passengers in Sligo. Hosted by Bus Eireann (who’ve been a supporter of The Model in the past buying a seat in our new Performance Space to help fundraise for the Future Model) we arranged for two excellent locally based musicians; Gerry Harrington and Margaret Rhatigan, to perform in the Bus Station.

Bus Eireann chose their busiest time; 2.3opm on a Friday afternoon, to make sure the most amount of passengers could take advantage of the music. Marie from Bus Eireann mentioned that it’s usually very noisy with the whirr of conversation at that time of day, but this afternoon you could hear a pin drop as everyone stopped to listen to the live music. It was great fun to clock the look of surprise on peoples faces as the walked in the door, especially the drivers! People were taking pictures with their phones and texting friends about it and the stationmaster Vincent even suspended announcements, going person to person to let people know the buses had arrived so as not to interrupt.

The music was really wonderful, a programme chosen by Gerry and Margaret with a series of tunes that flowed into one another so people could come and go and absorb the music rather than waiting to applaud between tunes. The sound was surprisingly good, with the notes sounding crystal clear from every vantage point. There is a little bit of footage on YouTube for you to listen too- apologies for the terrible quality but our camera wouldn’t co-operate on the day so this is grabbed with a phone camera.

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The performance was the start of The Model’s Live Lunch programme, which will see a number of performances taking part over lunchtimes in office/work spaces all over Sligo. It’s all part of our New Spaces for Music programme which looks to bring live music into unusual places, challenging how we listen to, and encounter, live music.

A big Thank you to Gerry Harrington and Margaret Rhatigan for such a wonderful performance in an usual setting, and to Marie King McGovern and all at Bus Eireann for making it happen.

Aoife Flynn (The Model) and Marie King McGovern (Bus Eireann) with musicians Margaret Rhatigan and Gerry Harrington

For more info on Gerry and Margaret please see a previous post on the live lunch

For more pics of the event see our flickr set>