Marion Daly Nolan, local music teacher in the Carrigaline area, has recently been announced as a finalist in this year's UK Song-writing competitions instrumental category.
Marion's composition "A New Day-(Meaghy's Theme)", is an orchestral arrangement of a Christmas song Marion wrote back in 2013 for her daughter Meaghan.
With the music industry and music schools particularly affected by the current pandemic, Marion found herself with a lot of time to fill so she set about orchestrating her song and entered it into the competition.
Having lived much of her life in Tralee, Co Kerry, Marion incorporated popular local airs from both counties Kerry and Cork, playing on two violins and intertwining throughout the piece.
The UK song-writing event is a truly international event with over 9,000 entries from 84 countries in 2020.
20% made the semi-finals, that is, four out of five entries did not get to the semis and approximately 2% of all entries made the finals, that is, 98 out of 100 did not make it to the finals. Winners are to be announced soon.
Marion is currently completing a Master's in Performance Composition at Cork's newest University, Munster Technological University (MTU).
You can hear "A New Day - (Meaghy's Theme)" on Marions Soundcloud