About the Choir

The Mornington Singers is an award-winning mixed-voice chamber choir based in Dublin (Ireland) and conducted by Orla Flanagan.

The choir was established in 1997 by college friends who wished to continue singing together after graduation. Today the choir has around thirty singers from a wide variety of backgrounds and nationalities, including Ireland, England, Wales, Estonia, Slovakia, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Australia and the United States.

Awarded first prize in the National Competitions for Chamber Choirs and Mixed Voice Choirs at the Cork International Cork Choral Festival in 2004 and 2005 respectively, the Mornington Singers has established itself as one of Dublin's leading chamber choirs.

We perform regularly throughout the year in numerous venues in Ireland and abroad. We explore a wide variety of musical styles, and our repertoire ranges from large-scale oratoria pieces to contemporary chamber works, with acclaimed presentations of both sacred and secular choral music.

The choir endeavours to provide a platform for up-and-coming musicians, commissioning and performing works by young Irish composers; choir members have also gone on to become professional singers and conductors. We have performed with celebrated professional musicians in Ireland and with some of the finest orchestral and choral ensembles in Ireland, the UK and Italy. In August 2000 the choir was invited to perform at the prestigious Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, England.

In 2005 we collaborated with the Torino Vocalensemble, sharing with them the opening concert of the Turin Sacred Music Festival in March and performing twice with the choir in Dublin in May of that year. The Mornington Singers celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2007 with a number of projects, including a tour to St. John's, Newfoundland as part of the Festival 500 choral event.

Trivia

Originally founded as the graduate choir of Trinity College Dublin, the choir takes its name from the first Professor of Music there, Garret Wellesley, first Earl of Mornington

Despite confused emails to the contrary, the choir is not based in Dublin, Ohio or Mornington, Co. Meath. The choir has yet to visit the Mornington Peninsula in Australia, and their broadcast credits do not include BBC Radio 4's infamous Mornington Crescent segment.

Like the choir, the latter two take their name (directly or indirectly) from the eponymous Earl's family seat in Meath. A composer and musician, Wellesley (aka Wesley) is better remembered today as the father of a number of famous politicians. These include the first Duke of Wellington, reputed to have said of his birth in Ireland that "being born in a stable does not make one a horse"!