Meet Mayo’s ‘School of Rock’

Have we found Mayo’s answer to School for Rock? It seems we have.

Indeed, who knew that the haunting, sombre jig so synonymous with The Last of The Mohicans could intersect so seamlessly with a Coldplay song?

But when you’re as creative as they are out in Sancta Maria College, this sort of thing is not only possible, it is actively encouraged.

We’d encourage you to go on YouTube once you’ve read this article and listen to them yourselves (2025 Waltons RTÉ Lyric FM Music for Schools Competition - Gala Finalists Concert, starting at 2:03:40) because it really is quite unique. So unique that it saw them crowned second overall at the RTE Lyric FM’s Music for Schools Competition.

Featuring 31 students in total, the piece begins with a gentle bit of rince. They are soon joined by piano and drums. Then, the accordions enter with the theme from The Last of the Mohicans (a film starring Daniel Day-Lewis playing an American Indian, to those not familiar). Seconds later, the soaring bagpipe melody is overlaid by female vocals before the whole band comes in with a pulsating, Iron Maiden-style dum-da-da-dum-da-da-dum.

Then, in the most bizarre but surprisingly pleasing of twists, they break into Coldplay’s ‘A Sky Full of Stars’ - minus the light show needing enough electricity to power Erris.

UNLIKLEY BEDFELLOWS

THESE two most unlikely of musical bedfellows weave in and out to the rat-tat-tat of drums and dancing shoes and the melody of a 15-piece choir before coming to an abrupt but immensely satisfying halt. (Just go and listen to it; our words don’t do it justice).

Regular Mayo News readers know that they are quite a creative bunch out in Louisburgh. As outlined in these pages back in February, Sancta Maria will become the first and only school in Mayo to offer Drama, Theatre and Film Studies as a Leaving Certificate subject for the 2025/2026 academic year.

Our front page on February 11 featured a colourful image from their latest school musical, ‘Bye Bye Birdie’, an annual extravaganza that goes from strength to strength every year.

So it seems only natural that they would take on a project like that - and not at all surprising that it would get to the Natural Concert Hall.

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Some background information on Waltons Lyric fm Music for Schools Competition. It was founded in 2012 to promote the benefits of creative music in Irish schools. Open to every school in the country, the twelve finalists - six primary and six secondary - are picked from the schools’ own entry videos. The winners in each category receive €7,000 worth of vouchers for musical instruments and equipment from Walton’s Music Ireland for their schools.

“We used the competition as a place for all of the musical groups in the school to come together,” explains Abigail Duffy, a student who took part in the rock-trad-Celtic mish-mash.

FORCE OF NATURE

ENTITLED ‘Gaelforce’, the piece is meant to mirror the continuous pulse and cycles of nature.

Speaking before their performance in the National Concert Hall, Felicity McElroy, a teacher in Sancta Maria College, explained: “Our school is situated in a really, really spectacular area of totally natural beauty; mountains, the Atlanic Ocean, Clare Island, Inishturk, Inisbofin, all this beautiful landscape all around us.” (Wow, that would make for one epic music video).

“We really felt that the underlying subject of our element of our piece was the rhythm and the pulse of nature, and we’ve just tried to incorporate that into what you’ll hear today.”

Guided by their musical director, teacher and well-known local musician, Matt Rowley, the performers used Lámh, a form of sign language used in Ireland by developmentally disabled and neurodivergent children and adults. It is integral to a modern, forward-thinking school like Sancta Maria College.

“Like one of our primary schools, we used Lámh in our school as an assistive communicative tool with some our students, we just felt that the lyrics of the Coldplay song really lended themselves to just opening out the piece, to include everybody,” explains Ms McElroy.

Well who needs ‘A Sky Full of Stars’ when you’ve got a school full of them?