The Irish Youth Choir and conductor Bernie Sherlock return for the annual summer course in 2022. IYC's annual flagship event, this year's summer course takes place from August 10th - 20th in the beautiful surroundings of the University of Limerick.

What will it be like at the IYC summer course?
A dream for anyone who loves choral singing. For nine days, you will be immersed in simply wonderful music. You'll be part of a group of young, enthusiastic and talented singers who will be taught and trained and conducted every day by the IYC's internationally-acclaimed conductor and artistic director, Bernie Sherlock.

To complement her work with the choir, Bernie has assembled a team of excellent vocal tutors. The IYC summer course also includes individual singing lessons, skill-based workshops, and a variety of other activities which taken all together will create an exceptional musical and social experience.

During the course you and the group will become a choir, Ireland's national youth choir, ready to perform in this year's Irish Youth Choir summer concerts in Cork. Limerick, and Dublin at the end of the course.

Musical Programme:

“Birds do sing,
Hey ding-a-ding-ding….”

Composers like birds!

This summer, the Irish Youth Choir will present an incredible programme of wonderful pieces, each one featuring birds - either tucked away in the background or strutting centre-stage.

Whether pieces are from the 1400s or 2021, or by Panufnik or Brahms, there’s a bird in there, somewhere. They appear in music that profoundly celebrates the whole wide world of nature, or else they sit above, perceptive and wry observers of the canoodling behaviour of human lovers. And sometimes they are themselves the stars in beautiful music that’s all about them.

It will be challenging and great fun to prepare this amazing programme which includes four pieces never before performed in Ireland, two of them never performed before anywhere!

Irish premiere: Roxanna Panufnik Celestial Bird
Jacob Archadelt Il bianco e dolce cigno
Caroline Shaw And the Swallow
Brahms O schöne Nacht
Irish premiere: Jake Runestad Why the Caged Bird Sings
Arr. Robert Sund Alouette
Michael McGlynn Eirí na Gréine
Rutter Sing a Song of Sixpence
Rutter It was a lover and his lass
Monteverdi Quel augellin che canta
World premiere: Arr. Eoin Conway *Sweet Lemany
Seán Doherty Under-Song
World premiere: Seán Doherty *The Peace You Hold
Stanford The Blue Bird

*Commissioned by the Irish Youth Choir 2021