The first time Noirin Ni Riain sang in public was in Portlaoise where her aunt taught in the Presentation Convent. She was five. Noirin, one of Ireland's greatest singers, was back in Portlaoise singing again this week nearly four decades later but in a different role altogether.
The Co Limerick-born singer, author and teacher has just been appointed artist-in-residence by the local authority - the first singer to hold such a position in the State.
The appointment was made by Laois County Council which has asked her to work in the county until next May to stimulate interest in music. Earlier this week she spoke about her life and plans for her tenure. "It is a great challenge to me and I am delighted to have been asked to take it up," she said following her first official task - a class with transition students in Portlaoise.
Hers is an ambitious programme, for she plans to work with all the 300 transition year students currently attending secondary schools in the county.
Later in the month she will start an adult singing group which will meet weekly in the Church of Ireland parochial hall, Station Road, Portlaoise.
There will also be what she called "a moveable feast" of lunchtime traditional music concerts which will be held countywide for the duration of the residency.
Each of these sessions, which will involve local musicians, singers and dancers, will be recorded and the hope is that the performances will ultimately be put on to a CD.
Then, there will be the music workshops in the Abbeyleix Hospital where she will work with the long-term and day residents, getting them to sing their own repertoire of songs.
Finally, Noirin will also do some work with the inmates in the local prison.
The singer, who has received worldwide acclaim following her recordings with the monks of Glenstal, said she was very excited at the prospect of promoting music in the area.
"Funnily enough, the first time I ever sang in public was in Co Laois.
"My aunt was a nun in the Presentation Convent in Portlaoise and I used to go there with my mother to visit her," she said.
"There would be tea and then we would all go into the parlour and the nuns would insist that I sing. I have a special affection for the place because I made my first public performances there," she laughed.
That special voice of hers was noticed by an inspector in the St Louis Convent in Dundalk where she was studying music for her Leaving Cert. "I told him I wanted to do law but he got in his car and travelled to my parents in Limerick to persuade them to make me study music in University College Cork," she said.
When she graduated from there she taught music and later met and married Michael O'Sullivan, who directs Irish World Music in Limerick.
When she was 35 she gave a public performance which led to world exposure with the Glenstal monks with whom she made three records, in 1980, 1982 and 1989.
She has also performed at four of the last five UN summits. She has raised two sons and has just finished another stint in college where she went back to study theology.
One of the things she has noticed already in Laois is the amount of company she has during her working day.
This, she explained, does not happen when she is working as a performer.
"You tend to move from place to place on your own and I am delighted with the company here and the people I am meeting," she said.
Over the next few months she is particularly looking forward to working with the elderly people in Abbeyleix, where she hopes to jog their memories and get them singing.
She said she was also working on an idea to hold a special singing event on February 3rd next year, St Blaise's feast day in Laois.
"Most people are unaware that St Blaise is the patron saint of singers and I would like to mark the day with a special event involving singing, perhaps with the transition-year students here in the county," she said.
But above all she is delighted at being appointed the first singer to become an artist-in-residence to any local authority in the State.