Limerick Early Music Festival!

Welcome to the First Limerick Early Music Festival!

20-21 March, 2021

The Treaty City’s own Early Music Festival is finally here! Although a pandemic year has put the dampers on live performances for the better part of 2020 and into 2021, H.I.P.S.T.E.R. and Now and Then Media, Ltd. bring early music from the banks of the Shannon River to a global audience with the inaugural edition of the Limerick Early Music Festival. Click here for the full festival programme.

A Celebration of Early Music in Limerick in Early Music Month

Every year on the 21st of March is Early Music Day, celebrated on Bach’s birthday. Limerick Early Music Festival (LEMF) also happens this weekend in the medieval city of Limerick, whose location on the west coast of Ireland gives it an ‘Atlantic Edge’ at the same time that it looks towards Europe and the world in a positive and multicultural embrace.

Definitely HIP

Historically Informed Performance, or “HIP”, has typically been—and very much still is—about making informed choices about performing Western Classical music from the early Medieval to the late Romantic—or about 900 to 1900—using what we know about history and social context. It is not about an unattainable (and over-claimed) ideal of “authenticity.” HIP responsibly researches history and culture in order to move forward and make informed and artistically sound decisions about performing music (and other art forms, such as dance and theatre) in the present. It seeks not to recreate the past, but to create a meaningful and moving experience for audiences today.

Limerick stands at the Wild Atlantic edge of Ireland and Europe, and also embraces the historically rich as well as currently diverse places which both of these are becoming. We at LEMF are a part of this transformation: we want to explore the many (often hidden) facets of Historically Informed Performance around the world, as well as represent the richness of our fellow artists, collaborators and concertgoers. We want everyone who wishes to enjoy and take part in this cultural treasure, to do so—and we want to bring that access to everyone.

Who are we?

Limerick Early Music Festival’s founders and co-directors are Dr Yonit Kosovske and Dr Vlad Smishkewych. Yonit is a keyboardist performing on harpsichord, modern piano, fortepiano and chamber organ. She is a Lecturer of Music at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. Vlad is a tenor vocalist and radio announcer, and presents Vox Nostra, Ireland’s weekly early music programme on RTÉ lyric fm. We have been performing and recording early music and contemporary music since the 1990s as soloists and as chamber artists. Limerick Early Music Festival is a production of Now and Then Media Ltd. and H.I.P.S.T.E.R., which promotes performance, teaching and research through historically informed concerts, courses and media in order to increase early music study and audience reception in Ireland, particularly in the Limerick area.