There’s something about Mary
MARY FOGARTY SPEAKS TO BRAY’S SARAH POWER AND DONARD’S CONOR O’REILLY ABOUT MUSIC AND BRINGING THE NEWLY-COMMISSIONED ‘MARY GORDON’ TO LIFE IN THE NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
MARY Gordon is a new original choral work for community choirs, to be performed by over 300 people in Dublin on November 5. It is the final event for Wicklow County Council’s 2016 commemoration programme, commissioned by Wicklow county Arts Office.
With ‘Mary Gordon’, author Marina Carr and composers Brian Irvine and Neil Martin have created a gothic love story set in the Blessington of 100 years ago.
Soprano Sarah Power, tenor Gerard Schneider and narrator Sean McGinley and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra will join the choirs to bring the tale to life.
Marina travelled to Blessington to learn it’s history and folktales, basing her story on the village under the lake.
Among those travelling to the National Concert Hall to present Mary Gordon is Conor O’Reilly from Donard who leads West Wicklow Voices, one of the participating choirs, and soprano Sarah Power, a native of Bray’s Ardmore Park.
Conor O’Reilly and West Wicklow Voices recently released a fundraising single called ‘Passing Through’ for national and international mental health week and national and international choir singing week.
They will be taking to the stage for a different reason on November 5, as around 30 of the 300 voices to perform Mary Gordon.
‘A young singer songwriter by the name of Mark Caplice and myself have written a song called Passing Through,’ said Conor.
‘ The whole idea is about a young man who is very strong for his family and friends, but has kind of neglected his own mental health,’ said Conor. ‘People on the outside think he’s very gregarious. The idea is that even someone like that can have mental health issues.’
Soprano Victoria Massey and the choir are also on the track, with all proceeds going to Mental Health Ireland.
Being a member of a choir is excellent for mental on a number of levels, said Conor.
As well as people getting together socially, there are physical benefits to getting the diaphragm working, breathing correctly, and all the technical exercises done as a singer warms up.
‘Also they are learning new skills,’ said Conor. ‘A lot of people wouldn’t necessarily have sung in parts, wouldn’t have read music, or thought they ever would. There is great camaraderie and good spirits.’
The choir literally ranges in age from 18 to 80, and is around 30 members strong, despite being in existence for just two years. They rehearse in the Lalor Centre in Baltinglass and at the moment they are meeting twice a week as Mary Gordon draws closer.
‘Everyone is getting a bit excited, and fearful,’ said Conor. ‘It’s the venue and it’s a challenging score for an amateur choir. It’s hitting them now. They’re starting to get a sense of what it’s going to sound like. Even this time last year, nobody in the choir would have thought they’d be singing in the National Concert Hall with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra.’
All the various choirs will come together at Shoreline in Greystones over the bank holiday weekend to rehearse for two full days.
‘ There might be a few kinks to iron out, but that’s what rehearsals are for,’ said Conor. ‘With anything like this, it’s what you put into it.’
‘I’ve learned so much from the choir. I’ve spent the best part of 30 years working with professional choirs and I’m a founder member of the National Chamber choir. I’ve worked with some really top ensembles in Europe. I’m a composer also and when I write for a professional group in, say the UK, or Sweden, you know the standard you’re writing for.
‘No two amateur choirs are the same. Their strengths and weaknesses are all different, and you’re constantly learning.’
The West Wicklow Voices are ‘a lovely bunch of people,’ said Conor. ‘It’s a real pleasure. We have an extraordinary talent set.’
SARAH Power has been examining the character of Mary Gordon to see how best she can tell her story.
‘It’s a folkloric story from Wicklow about Mary and Joshua Burns and this love affair,’ she said. ‘Joshua goes off to fight and is imprisoned. Mary is left behind and finds she’s expecting a baby. It’s not a good time to be an unmarried mother and so she is sort of rejected by everyone, including Joshua’s family and meets a sad fate. Joshua eventually returns, expecting to rekindle the romance but is heartbroken.
‘Years later, when they exhume buried bodies with the flooding of the reservoir, her body is perfectly preserved and Joshua is around to see this and lament the way she is treated. It’s a sad story, but a very familiar story in Ireland.’
Sarah has been looking at the story and thinking about the character, looking at the music, to tie them all together to find out who Mary was.
‘She was a very confident person. When she’s writing letters to Joshua, she says “I’m brave and I’m strong, and I will be until you come back to me. I know you love me, I’ll be fine.”
‘She’s also brave because she’s a servant. At first she says to him “I’m just an ordinary girl, I’m very lowly, why would you pay me any attention?” Despite that taboo, she is brave enough to have this relationship with him, and feels that she could have a place in society.’
It was Fergus Shiel who contacted Sarah about taking part. They knew each other but hadn’t worked together before. ‘We often said we’d like to. I imagine I might have come in to Fergus’ mind because I’m from Bray, it’s a Wicklow story, there are so many Wicklow choirs taking part, and the involvement of Wicklow County Council. He probably thought this was the ideal time for us to work together.’
She was very pleased to be invited to sing on the oratorio. ‘I jumped at it,’ said Sarah. ‘Working with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, Bray Choral Society, who I sing with all the time, and so many others.’
Sarah sang for years with The Holy Redeemer Singers, led by Pat Carey, and returns occasionally to sing solos.
A past pupil of St Patrick’s and Loreto, she also attended Bray Music Centre where she was taught by the late Patricia McCarry.
Sarah doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing. She joined a singing group at the music centre at the age of five, and always sang at home, in the car, and wherever she was with her family. She always wanted to be a singer. ‘I never had a moment of doubt and said, I’ll be a teacher or a nurse or anything else. I always felt I was going to be a singer. My singing teacher Patricia reinforced and said that if I wanted to, I could be a singer.
‘ That was always the plan. I’m very happy I do it, even though it can be a challenging career. But there are so many pros to it – the travelling, the people you meet, never doing the same thing one day to the next, and the music.’
As we know, it takes an awful lot of practice to get to Carnegie Hall, and that’s where Sarah was recently, performing in a show about Irish heroine Hazel Lavery. This was her first time to appear in the iconic New York venue.
With such concerts to deliver, Sarah needs to mind her voice. ‘You have to really take care of yourself,’ she said. ‘You need to be fighting fit for all the rehearsals and you must be there for the concert. I don’t smoke or have coffee. I limit alcohol and don’t drink at all when a concert is coming up. I don’t eat spicy food. It’s like I’m carrying my Stradivarius around in my throat!’
She and her husband Rob are based in Glasgow, following Sarah’s year there working for Scottish Opera. ‘We decided to stay and I commute around to all sorts of places for different jobs.’
Bray remains her home place, and Sarah stays in the family home on her Irish stopovers. She is looking forward to a busy number of months ahead, with a concert in Exeter and Christmas performances of the Messiah and other pieces over the Christmas period.
Tickets for Mary Gordon are available on www.nch.ie.