Friday 23rd September was a wonderful success across Limerick. For the first time Lough Gur decided to get involved this year and host an evening of culture with talented local performers in the Heritage Centre at Lough Gur.

“We are so conscious that there is a plethora of talent within our immediate locality,” said Tom Flynn, Chairperson of Lough Gur Develop-ment who organised the event. “This is the first year that the community have taken over managing the centre by the lake and we felt that Culture Night was an ideal time to actively promote it as a concert venue.” The Heritage Centre was packed to capacity as the show commenced at 7.30pm. The first half of the show saw a combination of music and poetry with Aine Humphries from Meanus performing on the harp and John Carew from Lough Gur reciting some of his poetry. “The acoustics in the Heritage Centre are absolutely wonderful,” said John after the event, “there was no ampli-fication needed which added to the atmos-phere.” The second half of the show featured Dolce: this duo of Jade Dillon and Noirin O’Sullivan from Grange are exceptional per-formers and entertained the audience with piano, flute and song. They are well known in the locality from performing at weddings and enthralled the audience with such renditions as ‘The Last Rose Of Summer’ and ‘Isle of Inisfree’.

Tom Tierney, MC for the night, spoke about the importance of keeping local interest alive and well, and how this could be achieved in a cultural context. He distributed copies of the words to two local songs, ‘Teampall Nua’ and ‘The Maid of Lough Gur Side’ and the Heritage Centre was filled with the sounds of the entire audience joining in. Austin Cregan, who was in the audience, said: “It’s great to have a copy of the words of both songs now and it was wonderful to see the young people in the audience learning the air of these songs which are so important from a historical context.”

Tom Tierney said after the show: “This is the first performance held in the centre but given its success it certainly won’t be the last.” He added “audience members told me that it was a delight to be able to stroll along by the lake and then have a wonderful nights entertainment in the locality with no cost involved.” “We would like to congratulate Limerick County Arts Office, in particular Joan McKernan for her help and support in organising this concert and we are already looking forward to and eagerly planning next year’s event.”