{"id":387908,"date":"2026-04-08T10:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/387908\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T10:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:18:09","slug":"meet-the-wicklow-pianist-juggling-liszt-scores-and-lambing-chores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/387908\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Wicklow pianist juggling Liszt scores and lambing chores"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Having grown up on a working farm, Fiachra Garvey was studying to be a vet. But a pivotal moment drove him to music. Now he\u2019s one of Ireland\u2019s few concert pianists and the driving force behind the West Wicklow Chamber Music Festival\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Fiachra Garvey.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/WP 22B15.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Fiachra Garvey.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">For someone who spends his days touring Europe\u2019s great concert halls, pianist Fiachra Garvey still keeps remarkably close to the rhythms of rural life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cI still feel I have a vet\u2019s lifestyle,\u201d he says \u2014 and it\u2019s not hard to see why. Only hours after performing in Limerick, he was back home in Ballyknockan, hair\u2011drying a hypothermic lamb in the kitchen at four in the morning. It\u2019s an unexpected image of one of Ireland\u2019s few full\u2011time classical pianists, a musician whose career might never have happened at all were it not for a near\u2011fatal car crash that pushed him to choose the piano over veterinary science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having grown up on a working farm, Fiachra Garvey was studying to be a vet. But a pivotal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24533,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-387908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-david-medcalf","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}