A young trumpeter hit all the right notes winning a €300 bursary at Ireland’s largest classical music competition for secondary schools.

Ben Greenham Taylor (17), from Skibbereen, was one of only six finalists at the 2025 Top Security Frank Maher Classical Music Awards.

Radio presenter Marty Whelan hosted the evening of outstanding musical talent, at which Ben performed two pieces: Trumpet Concerto in Eb Major by Joseph Haydn and Concert Etude by composer Aleksandr Goedicke.

Ben, who goes to Schull Community College (SCC), said: ‘It was very exciting. My music tutor told me about this competition and encouraged me to apply. It was a great evening with about 100 people in the audience. My friend who came to the competition said she had not really heard me play and was proud of me, as was my family.’

Hailing from a musical household, where mum Claire sings, plays piano and guitar and his dad Max is a guitarist, Ben was bound to pick up a few tricks of the trade.

‘I played too much kazoo around my mother as a child so she decided to send me to trumpet lessons,’ he explained.

Since then he has wowed SCC audiences for five years under music teacher Sean Walsh.

As principal cornet of the Clonakilty Brass Band, led by Ger Condon, he has played with the National Youth Orchestra for three years and the Irish Youth Wind Ensemble for two.

He recently won the 2023 Cork ETB School of Music Senior recital and claimed the 2025 Feis Ceoil Junior trumpet/cornet and Junior Brass titles.

Ben is already setting his sights on continuing his music career after college, hoping to play among the top brass at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music.

The Maher awards were created in 2001 by Top Security chairman Emmet O’Rafferty to honour the memory of his late teacher, Fr Frank Maher, a music teacher at Castleknock College in Dublin.

The awards aim is to showcase exceptional young musical talent in Irish schools and are open to sixth year post-primary students of strings, woodwind, brass and piano.