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music · Saturday 19 September 2026 · 8:00 PM 
A Night of Classical Music, Wine and Cheese with the Kantos Quartet
At Ballina Arts Centre · Barrett Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo, F26 NW83
At Ballina Arts Centre · Barrett Street, Ballina, Co. Mayo, F26 NW83
The Kantos Quartet play Ballina Arts Centre on Saturday 19 September 2026 at 8pm in a cafe-style setting, with wine and cheese served alongside the music rather than a formal concert-hall sit-down. The quartet is Sarah Sew and Hugh Murray on violins, Alexandros Koustas on viola and Aoife Burke on cello.
The programme spans more than two centuries of quartet writing. It opens with Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat Op.18 No.6, written in 1800, then moves to Caroline Shaw’s Blueprint from 2016, a piece that takes the Beethoven as its own starting point. The second half brings in Swan Hennessy’s String Quartet No.2 of 1920, a rarely programmed work by an Irish-American composer, and closes with Janacek’s String Quartet No.1, the Kreutzer Sonata, from 1924. Capacity is limited because of the cafe layout, so this is a smaller room than the main auditorium seating suggests and advance booking is required rather than optional. Anyone with a food allergy should flag it when buying tickets, as the cheese service is part of the ticket.
Ballina Arts Centre is on Barrett Street in the town centre, a few minutes on foot from the main shopping streets, with on-street parking nearby and public car parks a short walk away. Ballina is in north Mayo on the River Moy, roughly 40 minutes from Castlebar on the N5 and N57, about an hour from Sligo on the N59 and around three hours from Dublin. Bus Eireann serves Ballina from Dublin, Castlebar, Sligo and Galway. Ballina railway station, on a branch of the Dublin Heuston line, is about a 15 minute walk from Barrett Street.
Heading to Ballina Arts Centre in Ballina? Mayo has plenty more to see. Read the Ballina area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.