dedicated musician’s chair

The world’s first chair designed to meet the specific needs of orchestral musicians has been launched by award winning Irish designer Dr Gearóid Ó Conchubhair. The designer, who specialises in seating design, has spent the last five years researching his project; work that included contacting the world’s top 250 orchestras to gain insight into their requirements. Dr. Ó Conchubhair, who is Industrial Design lecturer at NCAD, has recently been awarded his PhD degree (NUI) based on the patented design.

The Dublin Baroque Players were founded in 1966 under the sponsorhip of the Dublin Region of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland ( Music and Dramatic Soc.). The founding members included the late Michael Clifden ( B.E. Civil) and Kieran Egar ( B.E. Elec) who is still playing with the orchestra. The orchestra rehearsed in Clyde Rd for the first 16 years of its life. The orchestra is Dublin’s longest serving string orchestra and draws on its membership from Ireland’s top amateur musicians.

Gerry Kelly, son of the arranger and composer TC Kelly, is a lecturer at the Cork School of Music. As a cellist he has performed in England, Europe, the US and Canada. He is the Managing Director of the Cork Pops Orchestra

Dr. Ó Conchubhair worked closely with musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra and the RTE Concert Orchestra to find a solution for the seating problems that have plagued musicians across the globe for generations. Orchestral musicians have particular requirements for seating having to maintain postures for prolonged periods of time without breaks while practising and performing.

Commenting, Dr. Ó Conchubhair said, “It is quite surprising that no one has developed a chair specifically for the millions of musicians world wide who have very specific needs. But when I started my research I began to understand the real design difficulties and probable reasons why the issue hadn’t been tackled before. For example, the chair has to be suitable for young and old, little and large and able to accommodate the needs of, say, cello players who sit over their instruments, violin players who like to sit near upright and piano players whose sitting position is dictated by the piano rather than by themselves.

“The response from all musicians that have seen the chair has been fantastic. It’s typical of people’s reaction to all innovative ideas – they wonder why it hasn’t done before! And it’s not just the musicians who like it. For years orchestra managers have been looking for nesting, stackable, storable, compact, stage friendly, comfortable musicians’ chairs...and that’s an awful lot to ask for in one chair. Then they also wanted the chair to easy to move and transportable around their venues or in their vans when they tour. I designed the ‘Equatilt’ chair to meet all of theses competing requirements.”

The patented and registered design can also have a much wider application for any chair based task as it allows for much greater upper body mobility The chair raises the pelvis above the knees requiring less support from backrests - a more natural position for the spine. The Equatilt chair is ideal for use with variable height desks, which is the biggest trend in desk design currently.

The design of the Equatilt was the basis for Dr. Ó Conchubhair’s doctoral thesis and has therefore stood up to the most rigorous international examination. The breakthrough design (photos available) uses a new development in forward tilt seating, that he has termed ‘equatilt’ because it combines aspects of forward equilibrium and tilt with the advantages of the conventional rearward tilting seat.

Dr. Ó Conchubhair concluded, “As word of the design has filtered through the design community I have been approached by a number of international seating manufacturers to discuss the production of the chair. They would be aiming at the many, many thousands of orchestras right around the world. To get the chair through the development phase will take about a year and I reckon that each chair will cost around ¤250 when launched eventually.

Background
Born in Co. Offaly, Gearóid Ó Conchubhair (45) lives and works in Dublin.
He is a graduate in Industrial Design from NCAD, Dublin where now lectures
He has been a visiting lecturer at design Institutes in Milan, Warsaw and Krakow

In 2002 he won the Thomas Damann Junior Memorial Trust Award, a travel bursary that allowed him to travel to the US, Norway, Finland and Germany to continue his research into the EquaTilt chair.
He was the 1998 IDI Glen Dimplex Designer of the Year that he won for the design of public seating that has since been adopted by Dublin Corporation
In 1993 he won the EBS Craft Award for the design of his Anú chair
In 1981 he won the Kilkenny Design ‘Young Designer of the Year’ award for the design of a letterbox

For further information please contact

Conall Ó Móráin, Managing Director, The Media Group, Dublin, Ireland
Phone *** 353 1 27559 75 or *** 353 87 2463 111
Or email on comorain@tmgroup.org

Programme

Symphony No. 40 in G minor. K. 550 W.A. MOZART (1756 - 1791)
First Movement Allegro molto.
On tour at the age of thirteen, Mozart reached Rome on Wednesday in Holy Week and went straight to the Sistine Chapel to hear Allegri’s celebrated Miserere. After one hearing, he wrote down the entire work from memory, merely correcting one or two passages during the repetition on Good Friday.
Such feats brought him fame as a child prodigy. In manhood, when he had become infinitely more brilliant in every way, he was relatively ignored. At the age of 32, harassed by debt, ill, and desperately worried by his wife’s sickness, he produced his last three symphonies – No’s 39, 40 and 41 – which must surely be among the finest achievements in all symphonic writing. Four years later he was buried in a pauper’s grave.
The very opening bars of Symphony No. 40 stamp it with a peculiar restless and haunting quality. The work continues with a profusion of melody, controlled and developed with astonishing originality.
It was produced, together with the other two symphonies, in forty-six days, but despite the speed of their composition these works have a concise presentation of ideas, a coherence and balance that has hardly been surpassed in all succeeding development of the symphonic form.


Concerto in C major for Violincello HAYDN (1732 - 1809)
Soloist: Gerry Kelly
1. Moderato      2. Adagio    3. Allegro molto
In 1961 the manuscript of this concerto, lost for two hundred years, was unearthed in the Radenin collection, now in the National Museum in Prague. Reference to the work in a contemporary catalogue had alerted scholars to the possibility of a reappearance of the vanished concerto. It was rapidly authenticated, though the date of composition is still uncertain – probably in the 1760’s. It was acclaimed in 1962 at its first performance by Milos Sadlo, the great Czech cellist. By coincidence, Sadlo was to perform as soloist (not in this concerto) with the Dublin Baroque Players some years later.
The opening of the first movement is brilliant and full of ceremony, though in the soloist’s treatment of the material it becomes lyrical. The development section serves in addition as a vehicle for technical display.
The heart of the work lies in the second movement, in a lovely example of Haydn’s musique galante, in which the soloist, in an almost improvisatory manner, conducts an intimate dialogue with the violins, exposing miraculous tonal contrasts, without the use of the wind section.
The latter is, however, restored to us in the last movement, providing an air of festive grandeur, characteristic of Haydn’s work at the time (he was then in the service of the aristocratic and brilliantly intellectual court of Count Esterhazy). It includes numerous themes, and with its dazzling scale passages, provides a spectacular display of virtuoso cello playing.

Adagietto, sehr langsam, from Symphony No. 5.
GUSTAV MAHLER (1860 - 1911)
The Fifth Symphony was first performed under the baton of the composer in 1904. It was immediately dubbed ‘the giant symphony’, possibly because of its prodigious length, though its importance as a monumental work of its period has since been recognised. Mahler himself had misgivings about the orchestration, and constantly revised it up to the year of his death.
The late Lawrence Gilman refers to a passage in the first movement . . . grown suddenly and passionately vehement, breaking in upon the measured tread of the Funeral March like an uncontrollable outburst of shattering, maniacal, wild-visaged grief . . . a trumpet shrieks its heaven-storming woe against the chromatic wailing of the strings.
Possibly by way of relief, the Adagietto appears later, wooing a prostrated audience with a yearning principal melody, rich in romantic appoggiatura effects, directed to be played ‘expressively’ and ‘soulfully’.
This justly celebrated movement is scored for strings only, with harp accompaniment. It springs from the same well of invention as one of Mahler’s songs set to words by the poet Ruckert: ‘I live alone in my heaven, in my love, in my song’.

Le Tombeau de Couperin RAVEL (1875 - 1937)
1. Prélude     2. Forlane    3. Menuet    4. Rigaudon
From the performance of his earliest compositions in 1898, Ravel was marked down as a dangerous revolutionist. He was declared ineligible for the Grand Prix de Rome in 1905, a jury decision that provoked an outburst of indignation even among the critics who had been, and afterwards continued to be hostile to his music.
A curious fact is that although he was a born orchestrator – his command of the orchestral medium is unsurpassed – he wrote comparatively little for orchestra, and most of that consists of re-arrangements of piano versions. Such a work is Le Tombeau de Couperin, his last solo piano work, begun in 1914, the orchestral version dating from 1919. The First World War profoundly influenced its composition, and in fact each movement is dedicated to a friend fallen at the Front.
The Tombeau, or homage piece, is more a homage to the French Baroque generally than to Couperin the great harpsichordist in particular. The Minuet, with its heart-rending trio section (marked Musette) has the same elegiac quality that pervades his famous Pavane pour une Infante Défunte. The work calls for a high degree of virtuosity in the fast outer movements, particularly from the oboe soloist who has plenty of piano configuration to cope with!

EBH.

Gerry Kelly, son of the arranger and composer TC Kelly, is a lecturer at the Cork School of Music. As a cellist he has performed in England, Europe, the US and Canada. He is the Managing Director of the Cork Pops Orchestra.

He has been involved in commissioning new works from TC Kelly, John Kinsella, Gerald Barry, Marion Ingoldsby and particularly the Cork based Spanish composer Angel Climent whose cello concerto he premiered in 2003. He has been active as a patron and promoter of concerts both nationally and internationally since 1982.
He has devised the Cork Lord Mayor’s Gala concert since 1991 which has raised over 250,000 euro for Cork charities. He has provided entertainment for practically every major festival since Cork 800 in 1985. He has recently formed ‘The London Irish Sinfonia’, which consists of Irish musicians based in London, gave their debut in St Martin’s in the Fields and is currently involved in a film project. His most recent performance was the World Premiere of the Angel Climent ‘cello concerto.

He has been very involved in the recent protest activity concerning the Cork School of Music. He is married to Evelyn Grant and they have 4 children, all of whom are professional musicians.

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