The Totally Made Up Orchestra
The Ballina Fringe Festival (Oct 4 - 13) are looking for musicians and music lovers of any age, any instrument, any ability to be part of the beautiful, monster music machine and phenomena that is The Totally Made Up Orchestra, a unique community music-making project led by award winning composer Brian Irvine.
Irvine passionately believes orchestras are leaving too many people behind and that too many people in our communities feel orchestras are ‘not for the likes of me’ and have nothing in common with them and their lives.
The Totally Made Up Orchestra, by contrast, truly reaches out to new people by creating ambitious new work that places the experiences, lives and worlds of local Ballina and Mayo people from all social classes at its heart.
Tell me more about the Orchestra
Brian Irvine’s “The Totally Made Up Orchestra” is a unique orchestra that blends composition, improvisation, words, sounds, movements, noises, gestures, humour and much head scratching into a unique and captivating performance.
It’s just the best kind of fun basically! Guided by the inspirational Brian Irvine you will devise, create and perform a completely new work from scratch over the course of just a few hours.
It doesn’t matter if you have been playing for years or minutes! It doesn’t matter if you are 8 or 80! If you can read music – great! If you don’t read music - even better!
All you need to be part of this amazing ensemble is a desire to be heard, a desire to play with other people, an open mind and a big creative heart.
Super fun and wild adventurous music guaranteed! Musicians of all levels and all ages are very welcome.
I’m interested..what do I do?
You simply fill out the Expression Of Interest form in LINK for a morning rehearsal & public performance on Sunday October 6th.
The free public performance happens shortly after the rehearsal and is free but ticketed. (tickets soon via www.ballinafringefestival.ie)
This event was produced by Ronan Quinn in partnership with NCF Cultural Co-Op.
The project was funded by a Creative Ireland Community Grant & Mayo County Council.
About Brian Irvine
Brian is an Ivor Novello award winning composer from Belfast. As Artistic Director of Dumbworld, he’s at the vanguard of community-music making and composition in Ireland and the UK.
He has collaborated and made work with artists from vastly different disciplines including Seamus Heaney, Primal Scream, David Holmes, Joanna Macgregor, U2 and Jennifer Walshe, as well as thousands of groups and individuals from all dimensions of society including ex-paramilitaries, young offenders, victims of violence, special needs groups, residential homes, community choirs, gardeners, footballers, bankers, homeless associations, call centre workers and schools.