Galway Music Residency continues its exploration of the Celtic Calendar through music this May. ConTempo Quartet will perform a specially curated programme in honour of Bealtaine on Tuesday 7 May at 1:10pm in St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church as part of Lunchtimes with ConTempo.

Bealtaine is one of four main seasonal festivals in the Celtic Calendar (Imbolc, Lughnasadh and Samhain are the others). It marks the movement from spring into summer and traditionally putting cattle out to pasture. It is a time associated with fire and flames, as bonfires were often lit to protect cattle, crops and the people who tended to them. Bealtaine was also a time to ward off fairies through a host of traditional practices including placing three black coals under the butter churn so the fairies wouldn’t steal the butter!

The Ceol Bhealtaine programme features classical and contemporary works that contemplate the movement towards summer. ConTempo Quartet will perform Haydn’s beautiful ‘Birds’ String Quartet, Dutch composer Chiel Meijering’s atmospheric Candybox and excerpts from Grieg’s String Quartet Op. 27.