Directors
Yvonne McDonald
Founding director of CÓRus, Yvonne McDonald has over 40 years’ experience in the media and education industries. Her career has involved co-ordinating Irish and international feature films, producing and directing television programmes and researching and producing live TV and radio. Yvonne has also been involved in education and training for over 30 years working on up-skilling courses for the media industry and has been lecturing on film and TV production for Maynooth University’s Media BA since 2001.
Returning to her first love and musical theatre roots, Yvonne came up with the idea for CÓRus in 2010 when she saw a gap in the market for easy singing classes for adults – partnering with musical director Mary Lowe the two designed a flexible evening class that made learning how to sing in 2 and 3 part harmony accessible to people who had never been in a choir group before and didn’t know how to read music. “I felt that it was something I would love and reckoned that others would too” which turned out to be true as, using our proven teaching methodology, hundreds of people come together each week to learn to sing in our CÓRus classes. Yvonne truly believes in the power of music to lift spirits and bring people together – which is what CÓRus has done and continues to do fifteen years later.
Director
Yvonne McDonald
Mary Lowe
Mary Lowe has over 35 years experience in media and music both as a performer and presenter. Her debut album, titled ‘Mary Lowe – Jazz Diva’, was released in 2006 to great acclaim. Mary arranges and records all harmonies in the CÓRus term songs and along with Yvonne, has developed a unique teaching methodology, which is exclusive to CÓRus. Mary’s greatest passion is teaching and over the last 10 years she has taught hundreds of women and men harmony skills, breathing techniques, range development, pitch correction, articulation and performance of an eclectic range of songs and loves every minute of her time with such enthusiastic and committed singers!
