2021/22 Bursary Allocations and New Chair of Trustees

Irish Heritage is pleased to announce the completion of the bursary round for 2021/22. Susannah Griffin who is from Northern Ireland and currently completing her Master of Performance at the Guildhall Schol of Music & Drama, has received the first Homan Potterton Bursary for Stringed Instrument (violin). Frasier Hickland has won the award for accompanist (piano) and is presently studying at the Royal College of Music for a Master of Performance in collaborative piano. Both Frasier and Susie, as she likes to be known, will be joining David Corr, Eire Lavery and Clara Sigle, who were already announced from November as our other bursary winners, at our upcoming concerts in April and June as shown on our events schedule.

Further news is that with the departure of Paddy Lennon for Ireland, we are delighted to announce that Tom Scanlon has been elected as our new Chair of Trustees. Tom has been a trustee for several years, more on his bio can be found on our website here. We have also had a change in our artistic side of the house with Audrey McKenna standing down as artistic director. Both Audrey and Paddy have given Irish Heritage very valuable service since 2018, steering the group through the rough roads of the pandemic and now bringing us back into operation. All of us at Irish Heritage owe them a dept of gratitude and wish them well for the future.

We are in the process of setting up a panel of expert advisers from the realms of music colleges and professional music performance to come together to advise, assist and generally help with the artistic development of our society going forward. Brian Hughes, a former bursary winner and who has already been assisting Audrey with producing and directing our concerts and recitals, will join the panel in a managerial role in coordinating the artistic side of the house. We will have more news very soon on how these plans develop.