THAT U2′s €2million annual funding to promote music education and participation in young people is being matched by the Ireland Fund and then local authorities, is familiar news to some. This year, Music Generation Limerick City (MGLC) is launched finally, one of nine nationwide and headed up by co-ordinator Boris Hunka.
The formal launch is this Culture Night, Friday 20 at Lime Tree Theatre, a proper bells and whistles gig that is free to all. 6.30pm on for youth groups’ organised live performances in sequence in the lobby plus a Limerick Jazz workshop.
Come along to the theatre proper at 8pm for film of the 200 members of various choirs who converged on Milk Market last Sunday for Elemental Festival’s take on Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, to be sung in harmony.
There’s an hour long production of Hunka’s musical theatre hit, ‘Lola Montez Show’, a telescopic tour of the fiery Lola’s life as imperial courtesan. It is also a first time platform for what Boris has created, “the MGLC 10-piece band. We’ve put together the best of local professionals and will cover every genre, blues, jazz a rock medley. The idea is to tell the last 120 years of music in 12 minutes”.
Known for his own band Burnin’ Love, his years with Irish Chamber Orchestra, and then Music in the Glen school shared with spouse Diane Daly, plus a background in festival production makes him front runner for the U2 initiative.
He is also multi-instrumentalist, a crack piano, vibes and percussion player.
“Music Generation Limerick is under the auspices of Music Network, the bid for funding was spearheaded by City of Limerick VEC. For now, the team is working out of Limerick School of Limerick,” he says. “There is €1million available to us over three years to be spent in the city only and expected to reach about 12,000 kids. It’s a great opportunity”.
You can read of the project’s many events in Limerick Post’s new column by the MGLC co-ordinator which will feature in Entertainment pages every fortnight.
For now, he speaks of touring secondary schools with the band, “the idea being to light a fire under the teenagers, get the second-level ones to sign up to courses after school… and break through teenage apathy”.
By the end of 2013, they will be in seven national and five second-level schools.
He looks ahead to a ‘band incubation’ facility for hip-hop, rock and pop starters. Younger children will access MCLG initiatives within their school day and for all involved, the ultimate mission is about “a range of musical styles and ages and different things” that will transfer, hopefully, to lifelong participation in the universally loved art form of music.
