Limerick Early Music Festival: MASKS & MASQUES

Description

Limerick Early Music Festival 2026
MASKS & MASQUES

Yonit Kosovske & Vlad Smishkewych, co-directors

PROGRAMME:

WEDNESDAY 18th MARCH
FESTIVAL LAUNCH
The People’s Museum
MASQUERADE: Exploring the Human Psyche through Gombrowicz, Baroque Music, and Chant
Justyna Czwojdinska: actor

MASQUERADE is an experimental performative happening that unfolds as a live exploration of masks, identity, and form. Inspired by Witold Gombrowicz’s reflections on the mask, the work exists as an open inquiry rather than a finished performance. Through spoken fragments, embodied actions, and live music, the artists test how identity is shaped, performed, and destabilised. Masks—traditional, grotesque, neutral, and ceremonial—appear as tools for experimentation, not symbols with fixed meaning. Baroque music and Gregorian-inspired chant enter into dialogue with movement and voice, evoking tensions between the sacred and the everyday. The audience is invited to witness a process in motion, where meaning remains fluid and unresolved.

MASKS AND MUSIC IN CEREMONIAL CONTEXT: Transformation and Liberation
Billy Mac Fhloinn: presenter, musician

Billy Mag Fhloinn will give a presentation and performance based on his work as director of Pagan Rave. This is an ongoing project which aims to reimagine folk traditions and calendar customs of Ireland. Using as a starting point the ancient costumed figures of Irish and European folk theatre and seasonal festivals, it seeks to operate at the margins of place and mind, and to embody the transformative and liberating aspects of masks and music in a ceremonial context. The event is proposed as an illustrated talk, where elements of the project will be explored through video, image, and text. Examples of masks, costumes, and musical instruments will form part of the presentation. Some of these instruments are accurate copies of historical examples, while others have been invented as part of the project. Space will be given to audience questions and interaction, and the event will finish with a performance on the yaybahar, an acoustic instrument invented by the Turkish musician Gorkem Sen.

RECEPTION

FRIDAY 20th MARCH
Concealed and Revealed
Saint Mary's Cathedral 8pm–9.30pm
Peter Barley: director
Choirs: Ancór & Saint Mary's Cathedral
Guest Vocal Soloists: Sarah-Ellen Murphy (contralto), Emma English (soprano)
LEMF Chamber Orchestra
LEMF 2026 McCullagh-Ó Briain Emerging Artist: Dylan Donegan

Concealed and Revealed delights in images of revelation and spiritual epiphany, of texts and sounds whose meanings are elucidated and uncovered, and of a multitude of ideas and images on the theme of concealment: the night, the moon, and sensual metaphors such as budding flowers and other feminine imagery, both sacred and secular. Featuring music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Purcell, and Maddalena Casulana, this annual choral concert brings together multiple local choirs under the direction of Peter Barley and Cecilia Madden. Cantatas, motets, madrigals, and virtuosic instrumentals are sure to delight the ear and move the heart in this programme of sacred & secular music in the beautiful medieval venue of Saint Mary's Cathedral. The recently established McCullagh-Ó Briain Emerging Artist Award marks its second year, recognising an outstanding instrumentalist playing with historically informed style, and named in memory of Bertha McCullagh-Ó Bríain, educator, and longtime supporter of arts, literature, and culture. The winner of the award will once again be showcased as a soloist during the evening’s concert.

SATURDAY 21st MARCH
Harpsichord Diaries
(in partnership with H.I.P.S.T.E.R., Historically Informed Performance Series, Teaching, Education & Research)
Belltable

Elaine Funaro: harpsichord
Eric Love: actor, narrator

In a special theatrical concert, Elaine Funaro and Eric Love present the live version of their children’s book, "The Harpsichord Diaries". This hour-long, family-oriented musical journey features Elaine at the harpsichord playing music from five centuries, in conversation with Eric acting over a dozen characters. The experience is enriched by projections of Andrea Love’s animated illustrations from the book. The script for this theatrical concert is adapted from the audio play version of "The Harpsichord Diaries", called "Elena’s Dream".

SATURDAY 21st MARCH
Chaconnes, Charades & Chicanery
Belltable 8pm

Mary Collins: historical dance
Steven Player: historical dance
Paulo Alonso, viola
Sarah Groser, viola da gamba
Yonit Kosovske, harpsichord, music director

Chaconne: a stately dance, popular in the 18th century
Charade: an absurd pretence intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance
Chicanery: the use of deception or subterfuge to achieve one’s purpose

This delightful performance of dance, music, and drama offers a peek into the world of Baroque Theatre with its fascination for masquing, disguising and Commedia dell’Arte and explores the use of these conventions to satirise and reflect the timeless foibles of human behaviour.

SUNDAY 22nd MARCH
MASK: The Art of Culture, Expression, and Transformation
Belltable 

Simon Thompson: presenter, actor

This performative presentation maps historical and contextual information in relation to the Mask and Masking. Simon Thompson—celebrated clown noir, actor, and researcher—will discuss and demonstrate how the masks relate to ritual, performance, and audience engagement through an exploration of the Commedia dell’arte Mask, Neutral Mask, Character Mask, Ritual Mask, and Larval Mask. Simon will discuss how the application of mask promotes patience and openness, teaching the student that every small gesture or movement suggests meaning, taking the focus away from the face and redistributing it to the whole body. Simon will share his research on how the mask facilitates the very first steps of play by reducing our tendency to overthink, allowing the body, its impulses, sensations, and emotions to lead.

SUNDAY 22nd MARCH
Masks & Gesture
Belltable 

Mary Collins: historical dance
Steven Player: historical dance specialist

This workshop explores the techniques and application of Baroque gesture, as well as the power and use of masks. This work has an intrinsic focus upon the relationship between social interaction, its customs and boundaries, and community health and well-being. It is particularly important for young people in the light of current research concerning social isolation and its impact upon mental health resulting from a deficit of physical interaction, the dominance of keypad communication, and the virtual world of the internet and social media.


SUNDAY 22nd MARCH
Wayfaring Pipers: Virtuoso Everyday Music of the Middle Ages
Belltable 

Ian Harrison: bagpipes, shawm, cornett
Poul Høxbro: pipe & tabor, percussion

Considering the many natural and human disasters that have struck Europe, it is remarkable how much medieval music has survived. Numerous liturgical manuscripts preserve Gregorian chant, hymns, sequences, and complex polyphonic masses, alongside sacred and secular songs sung by both nobles and commoners. Yet this material cannot provide a complete picture of medieval musical life. Most surviving notation records vocal music, and only the social elite—religious and worldly—documented what they performed. What remains is only the visible tip of a vast musical iceberg. Still, medieval images of active musicians show a vibrant everyday musical culture now largely lost. This living sound world is what the Wayfaring Pipers programme explores. Drawing on surviving sources and folk traditions that have continued unbroken since medieval times, Ian Harrison and Poul Høxbro reveal a rich exchange between popular melody and liturgical music, blending classical medieval sounds with inherited folk traditions.

Period	18 Mar 2026 → 22 Mar 2026
Event type	Other
Location	Limerick, IrelandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International