The Banbha Quartet brings together four of Ireland’s finest musicians and is one of a new generation of string quartets nurtured by the National String Quartet Foundation and building a following amongst audiences. For their fifth tour they present popular masterpieces by Beethoven and Schubert alongside a new work by Donegal fiddler turned renowned composer Seán Doherty. Inspired by the mix of Irish and Polish musicians in the Banbha Quartet, Sean’s latest string quartet celebrates the Mazurka, originally a Polish folk dance, made famous by Chopin’s piano works and also incorporated into the Donegal fiddle tradition.

Banbha Quartet

Lidia Jewloszewicz-Clarke, violin
Maria Ryan, violin
Ed Creedon, viola
Aoife Burke, cello

Programme

Beethoven – String Quartet in F minor Op.95 [1810]
Seán Doherty – Varsouviana [2024] †
Schubert – String Quartet in D minor Death and the Maiden [1824]

† First performances

Lidia Jewłoszewicz-Clarke, violin

Lidia Jewloszewicz-Clarke is an award-winning Polish violinist living in Ireland. She is a winner of the Hibernian Orchestra Concerto Competition (Ireland) and the Gdańsk Mozart Prize (Poland). She was a founding member of the Lupus Piano Trio, with whom she received the Special Prize at the International Brahms Competition in Gdańsk, and was a finalist of the Bacewicz International Chamber Music Competition in Łódź. Lidia is the recipient of a scholarship from the President of the University of Music in Luzern, Switzerland and an Artistic Scholarship from the President of Gdańsk for Special Achievements in Music and Culture. Most recently, Lidia was awarded an Agility Award by The Arts Council in Ireland.

Lidia regularly performs with Camerata Ireland, Musici Ireland, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra and the Ulster Orchestra. Lidia graduated with honours from the Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. She furthered her studies in London at The Royal Academy of Music and graduated with an MA in Performance. Her teachers included Remus Azoiței, Sebastian Hamann, Tomotada Soh and Mirosława Pawlak.

Maria Ryan, violin

A native of Kilkenny, award-winning violinist Maria Ryan is a member of the Banbha Quartet, the newly founded Marble Collective and performs in duo partnership with Dr. Gabriela Mayer. She also recently performed with the Prizm Trio as part of Cork Orchestral Society’s concert season.

In 2010, Maria moved to London to join Southbank Sinfonia; there she was awarded the position of Leader and chosen to perform in their chamber music showcase at Wigmore Hall. Over the following ten years, Maria worked with some of the UK’s most prestigious orchestras, including the BBC Concert and Symphony Orchestras, the English Chamber Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra. She recently undertook a Music Network Residency at St. John’s Arts Centre, Listowel with the Marble Collective and looks forward to another nationwide tour with the Banbha Quartet in January 2023, supported by the National String Quartet Foundation.

Maria is a recipient of the RDS Music Bursary and winner of the Heineken Violin Competition. She was awarded an Agility Award by The Arts Council in 2021. She studied at the CIT Cork School of Music with Ruxandra Petcu-Colan and subsequently at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne with Emilian Piedicuta.

Maria moved back to Kilkenny in 2019 to live on a farm in the countryside with her two children. She works regularly with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, Irish National Opera, Camerata Ireland and is a Lecturer at the MTU Cork School of Music.

Ed Creedon, viola

Ed Creedon enjoys a varied career as a viola player, performing chamber music, in recitals and as an orchestral musician. Recent performances include the National Concert Hall Chamber Music Gathering, tours throughout Ireland with the Lir String Quartet, tours to Finland, France and India with Camerata Ireland as well as solo performances with Camerata Ireland and Barry Douglas.

Chamber music highlights include performances with the Vanbrugh Quartet, as well as appearances with the Ficino Ensemble in Dublin, the Piatti Quartet in the U.K., at the Ortús Festival in Cork, and repeat invitations to the Clandeboye Festival in Belfast and the Killaloe Festival of Chamber Music. For four consecutive summers he took part in the West Cork Chamber Music Festival’s Young Musicians Programme.

Ed comes from Cork and studied with Constantin Zanidache and Simon Aspell at the Cork School of Music.

Aoife Burke, cello

Selected by The Arts Council as a Next Generation Artist in 2020, cellist Aoife Burke leads a diverse career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, curator and producer.

An avid chamber musician, she has collaborated with The Vanbrugh, the ConTempo String Quartet and the Gavin Bryars, Kirkos, Ficino and Crash Ensembles. Her love for chamber music was fostered, in tandem with many other influences, during a Chamber Studio mentorship with Richard Lester at King’s Place, London. Aoife has also appeared as soloist with orchestra several times both at home and abroad. Her début with the New York Concerti Sinfonietta in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in 2016 was described as “a thing of beauty…intelligent, poised, and refined”. (The Epoch Times)

Aoife studied at undergraduate level with Emma Ferrand at the RNCM in Manchester, and with Christoph Richter and Andreas Reiner at the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, Germany, graduating in 2014 with a first-class BMus. (Hons.). During the course of her studies, Aoife won the Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship and partook in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. Aoife subsequently obtained a Master’s Degree in Arts with Distinction from the CIT Cork School of Music, where she studied under Christopher Marwood, and pursued further study on the Performance Certificate Course (Corso di Perfezionamento) at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, Italy, with Paolo Bonomini and Francesco Dillon. She is grateful for the generous support of Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Music Network is funded by The Arts Council.