Sligo’s classical music organisation Con Brio put on its first classical music concert in 1999 and each year in the past 20 years it has presented concerts by the cream of Irish classical ensembles and soloists.

These have included the Irish Concert, Baroque, and Chamber Orchestras, The Vanbrugh, Contempo and Calling Quartets, Hugh Tinney, Finghin Collins, Catherine Leonard and John O’ Connor. It has also presented a host go highly recommended International artists. In recent years these have included pianists Alessandro Taverna, Nikolay Khozyainov, Joanna McGregor and Nicolay Demindenko,, violist Maxim Rysanov, Emmanuelle Betrand and Pascal Amoyel, Trio di Parma, Chloe Hanslip and Danny Driver, and cellists Leonard Elschbrioch and Marc Coppey.

The 2018/2019 Sligo Music Series will be its twentieth consecutive season and given the calibre of ensembles and musicians taking part it promises to be its best to date.

While Irish musicians will be well represented there will possibly be a greater participation by international musicians than in past Con Brio seasons with cellists featuring prominently. French cellist Marc Coppey is considered to be one of the world’s leading cellists. Since he won the Leipzig Bach Competition in 1988, at the age of 18, he has gone on to forge a stellar international career. He will give a solo recital on October 5th and his programme will include two of Bach’s profound cello suites, number 1 and number 5, together with Kodaly’s Sonata in B minor.

The young German cellist Benedict Kloeckner will perform in a duo with Russian violinist Yury Revich on November 11th and as part of their programme Benedict will perform another of Bach’s cello suites, the number 3 in C major.

The final concert of 2018 features a trio of outstanding British musicians – cellist Natalie Klein, pianist Julius Drake and soprano Claire Booth, while the first concert of 2019 will see a welcome return by one of the Con Brio audience’s favourite ensembles, the Contempo Quartet.

All in all a wonderful season lies in store for the region’s classical music enthusiasts or indeed for anyone interested in hearing some world class classical musicians.