Musical Team
Musical Director – John Ivory
A native of Bray, John has been involved in music for most of his life. While a college student, he joined the Holy Redeemer Folk Group where he learned to play acoustic and bass guitar. After college, music took a back seat for a while but during his twenties he joined the Irish language choir Cór Chualann under Sean O’Briain. In 1986, John was also a founder member of Bray Choral Society under Frank Kelly where he had the opportunity to sing many of the great classical choral works. He also studied piano for a time under Frank Kelly’s tutelage.
In 1997, John and his wife, Teresa, were instrumental in re-establishing the Holy Redeemer Folk Group. Initially playing guitar, John soon moved onto keyboards and eventually became Musical Director of the group. In 2002, in parallel with his Folk Group duties, John was invited to take the role of Choir Director of the Holy Redeemer Senior Choir, a role which he held for 7 years.
During the course of his involvement in parish music ministry, John had the opportunity to perform several times with the Folk Group on RTE television. A particular highlight was the opportunity to conduct the massed choirs and musicians of Holy Redeemer parish in the televised Christmas Eve Mass in 2008.
John has also acted as impresario from time to time, organising and promoting highly successful charity concerts with artists such as Liam Lawton, John Michael Talbot and the Dublin Gospel Choir. He also organised a number of very successful charity concerts featuring the Holy Redeemer Folk Group.
With a lot of encouragement from Teresa, John set about forming Voices of Bray Community Choir in 2013. Inspired by the rapid success of the choir, John is looking forward to many more years applying his love of music, and choral music in particular, for the benefit of the wider community.
Accompanist – Justin McCann
Justin is a Bray-based professional musician and has been playing from an early age. Classically trained originally, over the years Justin has branched out into rock, pop, jazz, gospel and musical theatre (among others!).
Justin has accompanied Bray Musical Society in their performances of Godspell and Seussical. He also performs with the Avondale Voices Choir and the Pitch Perfect ladies’ choir. He was official festival accompanist at the ‘Wicklow Sings Choral Festival’ in 2018 and 2019 and in the same month he was appointed as accompanist to Voices of Bray Community Choir.
Outside of his commitments with choirs, Justin has his own band, Mekkan Ju, for which he writes all the material. Their debut album, “Live at Tivoli Backstage”, recorded as part of the Liberties Festival, is an eclectic mix which moves the listener from from blues rock through funk and soukous rhythms to Afrobeat.
While he is not doing all of the above, Justin also takes on weddings, functions, solo gigs, band gigs, recording sessions and musical improvisation.