Event Date & Time
Sunday, March 20, 2022
11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Price
Included with general admission or membership
The Program
A Festive Introduction
Ringing Trumpets
Jeremiah Clarke (1674-1707)
Inspired By Nature
Carrigdoun*
Irish Traditional
Country Gardens (1728, English)
arr. Percy Grainger (1882-1961)
To Conclude
The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby
Irish Traditional from Donegal
Carolana**
Turlough Carolan (1670-1738)
* Like many Irish melodies, there are several variants of Carrigdoun, also known as Bendemeer’s Stream by Thomas Moore and The Mountains of Mourne by Percy French, all three of which feature in this arrangement.
** Carolan was the last and one of the greatest of the Irish harpers. This is a selection of some of his most celebrated music which displays a certain Baroque influence, specifically that of the Italian composer Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762) who spent the latter years of his life living and teaching in Ireland.
All arrangements are by the performer
About the Preformer
Of Flemish-Irish parents, Adrian Patrick Gebruers holds the unique distinction of being the first Irish carillonneur in the long history of the instrument.
A graduate of the National University of Ireland, he also studied at the Municipal School of Music in Cork (Ireland) and at the Universities of Salamanca and Navarra in Spain. He received his initial carillon tuition from his late father (Staf Gebruers) and subsequently studied under Jef Rottiers, Piet van den Broek and Eddy Mariën at the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen (Belgium).
In 2021 he celebrates his fifty-first year as Carillonneur of St Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh, a picturesque harbour town on Ireland’s southern coast; in the summer of 2002 Cobh, and University College Cork, was the location for the 13th Congress of the World Carillon Federation and in the summer of 2003 of the IX Eurocarillon Festival. In 2019 at a ceremony in Dublin, the Minister for Arts formally designated Carillon Playing in Cobh part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ireland.
A frequent guest recitalist throughout Europe, Russia, North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan, as well as on radio, television and recordings, Gebruers has been the recipient of several Travel Awards and a research grant from the Irish Arts Council and Department of Foreign Affairs, as well as a Tyrone Guthrie Centre – Cork County Council Regional Bursary and commissions from the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland and Alfred University (New York).
A former Assistant Principal of Colaiste Muire in Cobh, he is lecturer in carillon studies at the Music Department of University College Cork. A founding Vice-President of Eurocarillon, he was Honorary President of the British Carillon Society from 1997 to 2000 and again from 2001 to 2006. In 1998 he took on the highest executive position in the carillon world on being elected President of the World Carillon Federation and in 2002 was unanimously re-elected for a further four-year term.
In 2005 he received from Pope John Paul II the very special honour of being made a Papal Knight of the Order of St Gregory the Great (KSG) with title Chevalier for services to the Church.
He has become increasingly interested in composing and adapting music of the Irish traditional idiom for the carillon, an instrument that he believes is particularly suited to this genre.
He is married to physiologist Dr Elizabeth Gebruers and they have two sons, two daughters and nine grandchildren.