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The West Cork Chamber Music Festival did the unthinkable this year and moved their main venue out of Bantry House – it seems to have paid off

THE WEST Cork Chamber Music Festival is no longer the festival it once was. It began life as an event based in Bantry House. Now its main venue is St Brendan’s Church on Bantry’s Wolfe Tone Square, and events in the town outnumber those in Bantry House by a ratio of three to one. The change is remarkable, because for years the general perception was that if the festival were to move away from Bantry House it would simply die. The house, according to this view, was an even greater attraction than the music. The opposite has proven to be the case, and there was even a small increase in this year’s box-office receipts to prove it.