John McCarthy was born in Cappamore, county Limerick in 1885 to William and Ellen McCarthy as the second of seven children. His parents owned a farm, a public house and a bakery and while his siblings all went to college, John remained at home to run the family businesses. When in his early teens, John began taking violin lessons from John Corbett, a highly respected but strict music teacher in Cappamore, who insisted that his pupils learnt to play from sheet music rather than by ear. Under Corbett’s tutelage, John developed into an accomplished and note-perfect player. At the turn of the century, Irish traditional sheet music was rare and, to increase his repertoire, John began to collect popular tunes in the East Limerick and North Tipperary area. Some of the notations he wrote down himself, others were given to him by friends and fellow collectors, his sister Eily McCarthy, his cousin Justin McCarthy and his friend Cornelius Collins among others. Music notations were commonly circulated among players and some of the sheets collected by John appear to date from as early as 1876. He used the music to play with other musicians in pubs, dances and local houses. Having married in 1916 Hannah Lally of Knockshambo, county Mayo, he reared a family of twelve children. He died on 5 February 1966.
Maxwell, Weldon & Co. was a firm of solicitors operating from premises at 15 Eden Quay, Dublin in the early twentieth century.
The artists’ association ) + ( = a O (spoken: Convex and Concave Equals a Sphere) was co-founded by performance artist Ursula Mawson-Raffalt and fine arts artist Anthony J. Faulder-Mawson in 1993. The collective is known particularly for the avant-garde nature of its work and unique artistic language, combining text, dance, sound, painting, light, and film. The collective’s performance installations have been shown in Israel, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Romania, Wales, and Ireland and have been the recipients of numerous grants and awards in Ireland and abroad.
Henry William Massy was born on 12 January 1816 as the youngest son of the Reverend William Massy from his second marriage to Elizabeth Evans. He served as Magistrate and Justice of the Peace for counties Tipperary and Limerick and gained the rank of Major in the Tipperary Artillery Militia. He had a long-term clandestine love affair with Maria Cahill, who was socially his inferior and thus unacceptable to his parents. They eventually married in 1862 and divided their time between England and France with their eight children, seven of whom were born out of wedlock. He died at Grantstown Grove, county Tipperary on 20 November 1895.
A New York-based internationally renowned modern dance group founded by Mark Morris in 1980.
One of the world's leading ballet companies. Originally founded as the Imperial Russian Ballet some years after 1738, it was renamed Kirov Ballet in 1935. Since 1992, the company is known by the name Mariinsky Ballet, but its Soviet-era name Kirov continues in common use.