2015 Press Releases
The good, the bad and the €400,000 for charity
An incredible line-up awaits those keen to be serenaded at a movie-themed musical extravaganza on 4 July, as A Summer’s Evening on the Quad celebrates its 10th year and €400,000+ raised for charity.
Genius George Boole, UCC’s first professor of mathematics whose legacy the university is marking this year, will also be celebrated in two special ways at the 2,000-seater open air concert.
10 years & €400k! A pair of tickets for @ASummersEvening -RT to enter & tell us your fav movie http://t.co/zKH7Sml6v6 pic.twitter.com/spdZbxiXO0
— UCC Ireland (@UCC)
June 11, 2015
The magnificent Celtic Tenors, Peter Corry and Alex Sharpe will be on hand to wow the audience at the 'Music of the Movies' themed concert, with numbers from Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Guys and Dolls and many more favourites. Linda Kenny is taking on the role as Director of Production and will also perform as a special guest. All of the artists will be backed by the talented Cork Youth Orchestra under the baton of conductor Tomás McCarthy.
The event is being held in association with An Garda Síochána Bridewell Community Policing and is generously supported by BAM Construction, Evening Echo, Cork’s 96FM and The River Lee Hotel.
Down Syndrome Cork, Brú Columbanus, the Cork-Singida Partnership, FirstLight Ireland and Student Counselling at UCC are all set to benefit from the mammoth fixture on the Munster social calendar. What started out as a fledgling concert has morphed into a successful annual event for charity, says UCC General Services Officer and event co-founder Pat Cotter, who praised the people of Cork in particular and the sponsors over the years.
“We started the concert as a community charity event between UCC and Community Policing Barrack St (now the Bridewell), hoping to have one every five years. It just took off. It has generated over €400,000 in the last nine years, with 100% of the funding given to the charities. This is down the fact that we have such great sponsors who have supported the event year after year, acts willing to give up their time and UCC staff and management who supported us. But the key to all charity events is down the paying public and the Cork people in particular have been central to our success. We would not have made it to the 10th year only for them.”
A Summer’s Evening on the Quad 2015 takes place on 4 July 2015 at 8pm. Tickets are €30 and are on sale from UCC Visitors’ Centre (visitorscentre@ucc.ie) on the main campus, from Down Syndrome Cork Merchant’s Quay, Cork (or info@dsicork.org/021 4300 444 ), as well as Pro Musica Cork (info@promusica.ie). All proceeds go to the nominated charities.
Music of the movies @UCC QUAD 4thJuly 0868581268 €30 100% to charity Pls support.@NetworkCork @Realmagcork pic.twitter.com/6AdeIwUyDl
— FirstLight Ireland (@FirstLight_Ire)
June 5, 2015
Waxing lyrical about Boole
Given this is also the year that UCC is celebrating the bicentenary of George Boole, who can be described as the ‘father of the information age’, fourth-year UCC music student Robert Creed will make a unique contribution in his honour.
Music holds a special place in Robert’s life as he is visually impaired and has synaesthesia, seeing colour when he hears music. Originally from Kildare, Robert plays several instruments professionally and is no stranger to the stage, but his instrument of choice is the tin whistle. Having composed a special piece for the recent launch of the Boole Chronicles, inspired by the poetry of Boole, he is set to reprise the moving piece for the 2,000-strong audience.
Robert uses screen reading technology called JAWS (rather apt given the theme of the concert but actually meaning Job Access with Speech), to access his studies. He praises the groundbreaking work of George Boole for helping to open up opportunities for visually impaired students to use computers with specialist software to achieve their goals.
The Cork Youth Orchestra is also set to honour Boole’s legacy and family with a performance of a piece from The Gadfly Suite. The Gadfly is a socialist novel written by George Boole’s youngest daughter, Ethel Lilian Voynich, born in Cork in 1864. The Gadfly suite was composed by Shostakovich for the 1955 film adaption of the Gadfly. The novel was a bestseller and Lily Boole is famous in her own right.
Please support @DSCork and buy tickets for a @ASummersEvening Tel 021 4300 444 or visit DSCork bookshop in Merchants Quay @RTElyricfm
— Down Syndrome Cork (@DSCork)
June 8, 2015