Music Director

Ciara Considine                                       

Ciara grew up in Maidstone within a musical family and gained a prestigious CountyScholarship to study the flute (with Nancy Stevens) and piano (with Andrew Haigh) at the Kent Music Academy. While a pupil at the Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, she toured Brazil and Argentina with the Kent County Youth Orchestra; while a member of the Kent Youth Choir and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, she also toured the US, Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

She then went to Manchester to train as a concert-pianist at the Royal Northern College of Music. After getting her Bachelors Degree in Music, she went on to gain both a Masters Degree and a Postgraduate Diploma in Music Performance (Piano). Performing solo recitals and chamber music around the north west UK, she also taught the piano, flute and singing in Manchester.

In 2007 she taught herself the Celtic harp, Celtic lyre, Irish tin-whistle and Irish flute: four months later she recorded her first album of Irish folk ballads in MA studios. This first album was titled O Mo Chroi (meaning 'Of My Heart', from an old Irish saying) and she sang and played all 8 instruments involved. It has continued to gain positive reviews and radio play and sells consistently online via all the major distributors since its 2008 release. Following this success, Ciara brought talented Celtic musicians on board for her second album Beyond The Waves in 2010. Alongside Celtic ballads, reels and jigs, this album brings to life some of Ireland's literary wealth, with poems by Kavanagh and Wilde, in song.

As well as producing her two albums of Irish folk music, Ciara is a choral conductor. Whilst conducting the East Malling Singers, she is also the Music Director and Conductor of the Vigo Singers, the Kent County Junior Choir, the Kent Youth Singers, the Kent Music Summer School choirs and the new Maidstone Youth Music Society Choir 'MYMS Voices'. She has also worked with Gareth Malone on the BBC2 series Sing While You Work, as Ciara was the choirmaster and conductor of the winning P&O Ferries choir.