Vanessa Sweeney
Vanessa has worked with the Junior String section of DYO since the foundation of the orchestra in 1982. She has taken great delight in watching the standards rise from year to year from the beginning years (when you could come along and join in on a Sunday afternoon if you could play your open strings! ) to today when the individual standard of many players in the Junior group is quite stunning. Every year half the orchestra is completely new and the challenge of introducing that number of new players to the pleasures and disciplines of orchestral playing is both exciting and rewarding as they progress and learn to play together as a group.
Vanessa is a full-time member of the Music staff at Alexandra College where she teaches violin, viola, chamber music and directs 3 orchestras. (Junior School, College Orchestra and Senior Chamber Orchestra). She also teaches at home.
She plays viola with the Hibernian Orchestra and with the Delmaine String Quartet and in June 2008 she completed an MA in performance with the Delmaine String Quartet at the Cork School of Music.
She is on the panel of examiners for the Royal Irish Academy of Music, is a regular adjudicator at music festivals and a frequent contributor to the review section of the ESTA magazine. As a viola player, she plays regularly with the Hibernian Orchestra.