Musical Director
Frank Kelly
Frank Kelly was born in Dublin in 1959. He read an Honours Degree in Music at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1981 and completed his Higher Diploma in Education there in 1982.
While at university he studied piano with John O'Conor at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and singing with Veronica Dunne at the Dublin College of Music. He attended Master Classes with such internationally known pianists as Pascal Rogé and Alex Kelly. He was a prize winner at Feiseanna in Dublin, Cork and Arklow and won all the major scholarships and prizes at the R.I.A.M. including ‘Student of the Year’ in 1981. Frank was a finalist in R.T.E.'s ‘Musician of the Future’ competition and played a number of recitals on R.T.E. radio.
Following his graduation from T.C.D. Frank went to Paris to study piano for two years on a French Government Scholarship. He returned in 1985 to take up the post of Music teacher at St. Kilian's Community School in Bray.
His conducting career started in 1977. He has studied conducting with Dr. Brian Boydell at T.C.D. and Dr. Geoffrey Spratt at the Cork School of Music and U.C.C. He has been Organist and Choirmaster at the Church of Our Lady of Victories in Sallynoggin/Glenageary for many years, and presently also trains Wicklow Choral Group, the Concert Choir at Loreto College, Foxrock and Bray Choral Society Youth Choir. He has directed musicals including Grease, Oklahoma, Calamity Jane and My Fair Lady in very successful school productions.
Frank founded Bray Choral Society in January 1986. Since then he has conducted a wide repertoire of works from the Baroque period to the 20th Century. Notable successes include Bach’s St. John Passion, Beethoven’s Mass in C, Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Creation, Mozart's Solemn Vespers, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle and Stabat Mater settings by Rossini and Haydn, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Lauda Sion, Requiem Masses by Mozart, Fauré, Verdi and Rutter, Puccini’s Messa di Gloria, Poulenc's Gloria and Vivaldi’s Gloria. He has conducted on many occasions at the National Concert Hall, has appeared on national radio and television when he conducted the choir on R.T.E's Lifelines programme in December 1995, and directed "Messiah for All" on several occasions at Monkstown Church in aid of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.
In May 2000 Frank led a choir of over 120 voices from the county of Wicklow in two fine performances of Verdi’s Requiem in Bray and Arklow in celebration of the Millennium. Frank and the Choir have been presented with the ‘Endeavour Award for Culture’, sponsored by the Bray and District Chamber of Commerce, on two occasions in 1991 and 2001.
In 2004, Frank founded a youth section for Bray Choral Society to help ensure the long-term future of the Choir. As well as school teaching and conducting he is very active as a piano teacher at all levels. He is also very active in his local community giving starter lessons in various instruments and singing to children in his local national school in Ashford, Co. Wicklow