‘I didn’t think I’d be good enough for music’: Retired Cork teacher prepares for theatre performance

Catherine Janeczek Frost may be retired from her teaching job at Gael Scoil Coláiste Choilm in Ballincollig since 2018, but this mother of three musicians and one visual artist is as busy as ever.

She will play concertina at Pakie O’Callaghan’s show at the Cork Arts Theatre, celebrating the storytelling of Eamon Kelly, from January 30 to February 1.

Alongside Inniscarra-based Catherine will be her friend, Aileen Collins, playing the fiddle.

A few years ago, Catherine, who was musical director at Coláiste Choilm and also taught Irish and French, took up the concertina.

“When you’re an adult, it takes a longer time to get a bit proficient at it. I wouldn’t say I’m amazing at it or anything like that but I enjoy playing tunes with people that are at the same level as myself.

“I learned the concertina thanks to joining Douglas Comhaltas.”

Catherine can trace her interest in music back to her father who was born in the former Czechoslovakia in Trinec, near the Polish border.

When World War II broke out, Rudolph John (known as John) joined the Polish army, travelling through Europe as a foot soldier and ending up with a friend in London, having been demobilised in Scotland.

His brother was killed by the Nazis and his sister had psychiatric problems although she made a good recovery.

Catherine’s mother, Gobnait O’Leary, from Inchigeelagh, moved to London where she met John. “She came home and my father followed her,” says Catherine.

While he played the violin now and then, she wouldn’t describe her father as a musician. He worked at Fitzgerald’s Electrical in Cork and was particularly good at installing television aerials.

He wanted his five children to learn to play the piano.

“I started the piano and the others followed suit,” says Catherine.

In 1967, John surprised his family when he announced that he was going to take them to visit their grandmother and other relatives in central Europe.

He borrowed the money to buy tickets.

He had left Trinec 27 years previously, keeping in contact with his Czech family through letters.

Catherine, who was 13 at the time, remembers the trip, going back to her father’s hometown where her grandmother still lived in the family house near a railway track, with flowers and vegetables growing in the garden.

When John told his family he was taking them to Czechoslovakia, “he decided that we should all sing when we got there.

"There was a woman called Edna McBirney who lived in an attic above Fitzgerald’s on the Grand Parade. We were sent to singing lessons with her. At the time, The Sound Of Music was popular so we learned songs from that. We were like the steps of stairs, the five of us. That’s how the singing started.”

Catherine attended the Cork School of Music but wasn’t set on having a career in music.

“I didn’t think I’d be good enough to do music. But I ended up doing a BA in Irish and French and a BMus. And I taught those subjects. Later on, when my fourth child was a baby, I learned German and ended up teaching that as well. Music was what I mainly taught in the end.”

Following a teaching post at Christ King, Catherine went on to spend 27 years at Coláiste Choilm. “There were four of us involved in different ways in the teaching of music there, which was lovely. I directed about 30 musicals in the school.

“For most of it, I was the main musical director, but Ronan Houlihan joined the school and we shared the work. It was very well organised. Somebody else directed the action, so I wasn’t doing the whole thing.

“Now transition-year students at the school, they prepare to put on a show at Christmas. There would be two casts alternating to give everyone a chance.

“It’s a real team thing, between choreography, the acting, costumes, make-up, and the building of the set. It’s a good learning process.”

Catherine is a member of Madrigal 75, a chamber choir that was set up at UCC.

“It’s a very special choir. Most people in it are musicians. Every note must be perfect.”

With her concertina, Catherine has travelled to Galicia in Spain, teaming up with traditional and pipe bands.

“We’ve also gone to Rennes in France which is twinned with Cork. We twinned Inniscarra with a place in Brittany called Plougonven. It’s great. You can call to people’s houses there and brush up on your French.”

Catherine’s children are all earning a living in Ireland in the arts.

“Deirdre did a degree in art, got ‘student of the year’, and has an exhibition in Dublin; Catriona is a percussionist; Sinead plays the bassoon and Paul plays the trombone as well as composing and arranging.

“I didn’t expect them to work in the arts but I’m very happy that they’re making a living from it. All their partners are musicians.

“We always had them involved in music. John O’Connor had a concert band in Ballincollig so they joined that and got lots of tuition in brass instruments. They liked music so much that they decided to do degrees in it at Cork School of Music.

“Catriona was going a different road for a while. She studied media at CIT (now MTU) but ended up doing a Masters in percussion.”

The family all spoke Irish growing up at home.

Catherine’s husband, Paul Frost, now retired, was a teacher of Irish and French, at North Presentation Brothers.

“He plays double bass and has put groups together for the Slógadh music competition."

That competition, she said, would have started off the Hot House Flowers and Clannad.