The blind cello player bringing music to the streets of Tyrone

Since he was a child, Dominykas Markevicius had dreamed of playing the cello in an orchestra. The dream was so strong that when his family moved to Ireland and set up home in Tyrone, a teenage Dom stayed in his native Lithuania to study at one of the country’s top music academies.

However, his dreams were shattered when a degenerative eye condition resulted in him losing his eyesight while at the academy.

Forced to abandon his hopes of a career in music, Dominykas, known as Dom, joined his family in Cookstown in 2019 and began to look at what else he could do with his life.

He brought his cello with him but it lay untouched in his room, a symbol of the life he could have had.

Last year, however, a friend asked if he would play a few songs at a birthday party.

Reluctantly, Dom agreed and picked up his once-beloved instrument for the first time in several years to practice.

It was a decision which was to reignite his passion for the cello – and once again set him on the dream of making music in career.

Dom is now a self-employed musician, with a growing online presence under the name @BlindCello.

A few weeks ago, local photographer Jason McCartan was walking along Market Street in Omagh when he heard the melodic sound of a cello being played outside a local shop.

Jason took a short video of Dom performing his version of the hit song ‘Pink Pony Club’ by American songwriter Chappell Roan.

The video was shared on the We Are Tyrone Facebook page and within a couple of days had been viewed almost 90,000 times and received many positive comments.

It led many people to ask the question: who is the blind cello player and what is his story?

Dom, who is now 33, grew up in the historic port city of Klaipeda in Lithuania.

His father moved to Cookstown in 2004 for work, with Dom remaining in Klaipeda with his mother and older brother. Given the poor economic outlook in Lithuania, his mother and brother later also moved to Ireland, but Dom stayed in Klaipeda to finish his education, while living with his grandfather.

Dom, who first started playing the cello when he was seven, applied to study at the prestigious Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in the country’s capital Vilnius.

After securing a much-coveted place at the academy, he made the difficult decision to move to Vilnius and live alone in order to chase his dreams.

However, a serious eye condition, which had first started to emerge in his early teenage years, was to bring those plans to a devastating end.

“When I was 18, my eyesight started to degrade very rapidly, I went to the ophthalmologist and they discovered I had glaucoma and that it was untreatable,” he said.

Glaucoma is a condition that damages the eye’s optic nerve and can often lead to vision loss or blindness. The condition can happen at any age but is usually more common in older people.

The diagnosis and the realisation his eyesight was only to get worse, left Dom’s career plans in tatters.

“I had always wanted to be a cellist in an orchestra but when I started losing my sight I knew I could not continue on that path because to be in an orchestra I needed to be able to read notes, and I would not be able to do that.”

Dom managed to finish his course at the music academy, before moving to Cookstown to be reunited with his family.

After arriving in Ireland, his eyesight continued to deteriorate and for a couple of years around the time of the Covid pandemic he was blind in both eyes.

While he remains completely blind in his right eye, he has very limited vision in his left eye.

realistic

He continues to get treatment for his condition. While he is thankful for the care he receives from local medical teams, he is realistic about his sight ever returning.

“I do have my hope in my heart, but there’s no medical hope,” he said.

After performing at his friend’s party last year, Dom decided to start busking again – something he had first done as a teenager on a school trip to Poland.

He and a friend had spent all their money on the trip and had nothing left to buy souvenirs for their families. They busked for a couple of hours and managed to raise enough money to buy presents to bring home.

Dom loved the experience and also regularly busked in parts of the North while visiting his father in Cookstown during the summer holidays.

Since picking up the cello again last year, Dom is back busking, with Omagh, Coleraine, Portrush and Belfast some of his regular locations for performing.

It is something which he enjoys greatly.

“As a musician, we all dream some some day to be a performer, and that’s the best stage to be on. When busking, you communicate with people and if people don’t like it, they pass on. If they like it, they stop and listen. They say good words and acknowledge your music. I totally love it.”

He is amazed at some of the reactions he gets to his performances.

“I was basking in Coleraine yesterday when a woman told me ‘you brought me to tears’. I said ‘sorry’, but then she said ‘no, it’s not in a bad way’.

“That’s one of the many situations that are very enjoyable to me. Another would be when small kids are dancing around or something like that. That’s very enjoyable.

“People just come up and ask me for a song. In Omagh recently a woman came to me and asked if I can play ‘Hallelujah’. I said, yeah, I have the backing track, that’s no problem.”

Busking is obviously very dependent on weather conditions, and Dom is trying to open up other opportunities to perform, including weddings and public events.

He is also looking at the possibility of recording an album next year.

Although he is classically trained, the majority of music Dom plays during busking sessions is pop music. He is just happy to share the sound of an instrument he loves.

“The classical stuff is kind of niche but the popular music reaches a lot more people.

“The cello is not an instrument that would usually be associated with busking, so I am happy to spread the sound of cello to as many people as I can.”

Earlier this year, Dom was invited to perform at the International Klaipeda Cello Festival – one of the world’s most prestigious events for cello players and fans.

The fact it was held in the city where he grew up made it all the more poignant.

“I was very honoured by that,” said Dom.

Achieving your dreams can take many different paths.