Past pupil of Tullamore school returning home to perform at Arts Centre in home town this week

A PAST pupil of Sacred Heart School, Tullamore who now works as a professional violinist will be returning this week to perform at the Esker Arts Centre.

Mollie Wrafter moved to Manchester to study music after completing the Leaving Certificate at Sacred Heart School in 2016.

A daughter of Jimmy and Dolores Wrafter, Ballinagar, she sang with the school choir and performed with the orchestra at the Sacred Heart.

She is a member of the Manchester-based Treske Quartet which will take the stage at Esker Arts in Tullamore on Thursday, October 17 (8pm).

Mollie (pictured below) said the concert is particularly special for her. “Being from Co Offaly, it’s exciting to return and perform in my home town with my string quartet,” she said.

“After spending the last eight years performing around the world, it’s a great feeling to be back where it all started. It’s a privilege to share the stage with my talented colleagues - Oliver Baily, Abi Hammett and Robert Wheatly - for an audience that has supported me from when I was a music student of Adele O’Dwyer, Michael Moore, Oonagh Keogh and Regina McCarthy and a pupil in the Sacred Heard School. I was generously supported also by Maureen DeForge, the Birr Classical Music Festival and the Trench Committee.

“We’ll be playing a selection of our favourite music, and I hope to see many familiar faces in the audience.”

Sean Walsh, director, Esker Arts Centre said: “We are really looking forward to welcoming the Treske Quartet to Esker in October. It’s great that there is a musician from Tullamore. Esker Arts was built to showcase the great talent from this part of the country and Mollie is wonderful example of how people can make a career from their talent. She has performed all over the world and we are delighted to be able to showcase her gifts here in Tullamore.”

Mollie Wrafter graduated with first class honours from the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) studying with Leland Chen.

During her time at RNCM, she won the Norman George Violin Competition and the Nossek Prize for Chamber Music.

She was awarded the Irish Heritage Performance Bursary for her Wigmore Hall debut performance in 2019.

Since completing her undergraduate study at RNCM, she has enjoyed a busy freelance career balancing solo engagements and her quartet.

In April 2022, Mollie won the Aileen Gore Cup & RTE Lyric FM Award at the Feis Ceoil in Dublin. Subsequently, she was awarded the RDS Jago Award and a professional solo engagement with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra which aired on RTÉ Lyric FM.

Mollie features on Manchester Collective’s debut LP, ‘The Centre is Everywhere’ and was named one of Golden Plec Magazine’s ‘PlecPicks’ in 2021.

This year, she has thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Hallé Orchestra, Manchester, through their Advanced Orchestral Strings Programme and was delighted to receive the Charles Hallé Award. Mollie sits on the Board of Directors of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland.

As a member of the Treske Quartet, Mollie is dedicated to performing new music and working with composers.

In 2022, at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada, Treske worked with the JACK Quartet and performed the world premier of ‘La Candela’ by New York based composer Gabriel Bouche Caro.

Last year Treske were invited by JACK to New Music on the Point in Vermont, USA where they worked with four emerging composers on works that were written especially for the Manchester quartet.

The quartet are pursuing partnerships with three young composers - Leah Mullen, Matt Brown and Claire Victoria Roberts.

Highlights for the quartet include receiving second place at the Cavatina Competition in Wigmore Hall and performing Different Trains (Reich) and Black Angels (Crumb) in RIAM’s Whyte Recital Hall.