Stories from across the centuries at the Limerick Early Music Festival 2025 from March 18 – 23

Carlos Nunez Band Celtic Stories of the Cantigas will perform on 23rd March St Johns Cathedral at the Limerick Early Music Festival 2025 from March 18 – 23

Limerick Early Music Festival 2025 brings a musical feast with everything from 21st-century harpsichord to medieval Slavic epics

Limerick City’s own festival of music from ages past returns to the Treaty City this March to entertain and enthral with everything from medieval Slavic epics to modern music for ancient instruments, sacred choral music, chamber sonatas, Renaissance puppet-making workshops, and interactive Baroque concerts for the youngest early music fans. Topping it all off is a visit from the globally-renowned guru of the Galician pipes, Carlos Núñez.

Now in its fifth year, the Limerick Early Music Festival will fill the week after Saint Patrick’s day with unforgettable musical tales under the theme of ‘Scéalta – Stories’. Stories are the magical stuff of history as well as the core of current events, and for half a decade the Limerick Early Music Festival has made it its mission to bring these amazing narratives to Limerick audiences.

Across six days of events, leading national and international Early Music artists will weave their spell of storytelling for concertgoers, taking them on extraordinary musical adventures for the ears, the imagination, and the soul.

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Tuesday, 18th March marks the first day of festival events, courtesy of LEMF’s longstanding collaboration with Saint Mary’s Cathedral. Under the auspices of the Cathedral’s much-loved lunchtime concert series, the duo of Leila Clarke-Carr and Yonit Lea Kosovske perform a programme titled “Faith and Fantasy”, that brings together works of sublime spiritual beauty alongside florid flights of Baroque flourish. (1:15pm 18 March, Saint Mary’s Cathedral)

Immediately following, LEMF invites the crowds to a Festival Launch Event at Dance Limerick (St John’s Square) at 3:00pm, in collaboration with Mary Immaculate College’s Irish Centre for Transnational Studies. MIC faculty members Dr Sabine Egger and Dr Ailbhe Kenny curate an afternoon and evening featuring a performance of Ukrainian music with Duo Galleon (Vsevolod Sadovyi and Snezhana Rybal’ska), a pair of Ukrainian musicians recently arrived in Ireland in these last few years. Interwoven with curated readings, this performance is followed by a screening of Oksana Karpovych’s film Intercepted, a powerful feature-length documentary contrasting the everyday life of Ukrainians since the full-scale invasion, with intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families.

The festival heads to campus on Wednesday, March 19th and Thursday, March 20th with LEMF partnering with the University of Limerick for several events, beginning with a Tower Seminar & Performance titled ‘New Music for Harpsichord’ (Wednesday 19th March, 4pm Theatre 2, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance). On Thursday afternoon, 20th March at 1:15pm in Theatre 2 of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, students on the MA Classical String Performance programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance will provide a free lunchtime concert of music of Baroque and Contemporary music in collaboration with MA Course Director André Swanepoel and Aoife Nic Athlaoich, both members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra. The programme also welcomes Brooke Green from Sydney, Australia, (treble viol & composer).

On Friday, March 21st Stories of Consolation and Confidence are the theme of the annual Bach and choral music concert that kicks off the weekend of festival events (8pm Friday 21 March in at Saint Mary’s Cathedral). This concert, which has by now become an annual tradition on LEMF’s billing, will see Ancór, St Mary’s Cathedral Choir, Sagittarius Hiberniensis, and the LEMF orchestra and vocal soloists perform music by Giovanni Gabrieli and Isabella Leonarda, alongside chamber music by Buxtehude—and of course two unmissable Bach cantatas.

Featured in this concert is the result of Limerick Early Music Festival’s most recent endeavour, the inception of an annual Emerging Artist Award named in honour of the late arts supporter and educator Bertha McCullagh-Ó Briain. The first awardee of this prize, violinist Kevin Meehan, will take the stage mid-concert to perform the Buxtehude trio sonata.

Saturday, March 22nd events bring on the mirth and merriment and invite the youngest of LEMF’s fans to participate in early music. Starting with strolling musicians at the Milk Market from 10:00-12:00, families can then head over to the Belltable Hub (right next door to the theatre) for a workshop where puppeteer Rose Minnema will guide creative youngsters in building Medieval and Renaissance puppets of their own to take home and play with. Immediately following, the Belltable stage will welcome Classicalkids.ie, a trio of the country’s most dedicated early music specialists, for an Interactive Baroque music concert (2–3pm Belltable).

Inquiring minds will love the interplay between architecture and acoustics, past and present, that infuses the talk at 4pm, given by Dr Eoin Callery of the University of Limerick. His presentation will show how the interactive virtual acoustic technologies he and his colleagues have been developing can tell stories through sounds, by emulating spaces—and we’ll get to hear how this technology will be put to use in concert later that evening! (Belltable, 4–5pm).

Evoking the sounds of the Slavic steppes and the palaces and churches of Kievan-Rus’, Slovo: The Tale of Igor is a retelling in sounds and story of the failed campaign of Prince Igor Sviatoslavich against a horde of invaders. A cautionary tale against waging war for war’s sake, this timely epic is brought to life by Wolodymyr Smishkewych (voice and lyre) with Vsevolod Sadovyi on early percussion and winds and Snezhana Rybal’ska playing early bowed strings and winds. (8pm, Belltable; preconcert talk at 7pm)

Sunday, March 23rd the final day of the festival features the here-and-now of early music, with contemporary chamber works for early instruments by women composers as the core of the programme Still, She Rises! Showcasing works by Australian composer and viol player Brooke Green, and with the world premiere of Baile by Xenia Pestova Bennett, amazing stories abound and Irish connections are plentiful. (Belltable, 2pm–3pm Concert, 3:15pm-3:45 Panel)

The finale concert of the 2025 Limerick Early Music Festival is in the hands of global bagpipe superstar Carlos Núñez, known for his pyrotechnical playing on the Galician gaita, but perhaps less known for his love of medieval music. With Celtic Stories of the Cantigas, Núñez brings to high levels of danceability some of the most intriguing pieces of medieval music and brings to life the stories that inspired them. (8pm–9:30pm, Saint John’s Cathedral)

“For five years now, LEMF has become a destination for Early Music lovers in Ireland and further afield,” said LEMF co-directors Yonit Kosovske and Vlad Smishkewych. “We have strived, since our very beginnings, to be a place where old and new meet and play shoulder to shoulder.”

“Ancient traditions, contemporary approaches, and music from many cultures all live side-by-side on our stages, attesting to how we strive to listen back, live in the present, and look forward to the future.”

“The 2025 Limerick Early Music Festival features storytelling across time and place and space, bringing audiences along diverse soundscapes, filling their eyes, ears, and hearts with colourful tapestries of sound and word across continents, countries, and cultures and with over 1000 years of musical tales, vocal and instrumental.”

Aon scéal? Have you a story for me? Indeed, we do.

For more information, tickets, and booking see www.limerickearlymusic.com.