THE ONLY CONCERTS IN IRELAND
At the start of the pandemic one of Ireland’s top classical musicians came up with a plan to gather stars from his world and bring music to those in residential care. What happened next is an extraordinary story of hope...
IT was something the nursing manager at the care home couldn’t quite believe. He was watching as the woman in her nineties sang along with every word while the musicians played songs from opera to Abba. And what was amazing was this lady had dementia and hadn’t spoken one word since she had entered the nursing home two years before.
She was a member of the audience at Mobile Music Machine’s Covid Care Concerts, set up by internationally-renowned cellist Gerald Peregrine.
The 43-year-old had previously brought classical music to schools and children from disadvantaged communities with his organisation while not touring the world playing concerts.
Now, as a result of the pandemic, he has enlisted some of the best in the business who are busy bringing joy to nursing and residential home across Ireland with some miraculous results.
‘I had just come off the back of a US tour with my trio in February. I was working in schools with the Mobile Music Machine for a couple of weeks but then the schools shut and I spent the next two months at home.
‘I didn’t touch the cello — I think we needed a break from each other. I took up playing the piano, walking and watching Netflix like everyone else and used that time to process what was going on.’
The early stages of the pandemic were overwhelming for everyone, not least the millions of musicians who suddenly had no-one to play to. Opera singers in Italy took to their balconies to sing, people did Facebook live concerts from home and it got Gerald thinking.
‘I started wondering what I could do to give something back to the community. As a musician I felt it was my responsibility to give something back as I have this talent or ability and I wanted to help in a small way. Some of my elderly neighbours were at me to give a garden concert so I did a small concert on a lovely sunny Sunday. They were delighted and that helped lift everybody’s spirits.’
Gerald comes from an impressive musical pedigree and his wider family is involved in music and the arts also.
‘My mother is Sheila O’Grady, one of the O’Grady Family, and then my family at large is Frank Patterson the tenor, Des Keogh the actor, The Cassidys, sean nos singer Sibéal.
‘Music was always in my DNA I guess. I studied in London at the Royal College of Music and I was a Fulbright Scholar in the US in Indiana. My most recent big project before this was that I made my debut recording with Naxos which was a top ten record in Britain.’
And it was his uncle, Frank Patterson, who first revealed to Gerald what the power of performing in care homes could do.
‘I think my first concert in a care home was when I was 11 years of age,’ he says.’ I was in New York with my uncle Frank Patterson the tenor. I will never forget it as my cousin and myself were dressed to the nines in concert tails and we really made a proper presentation. That stuck in my mind.’
So he decided to gather a team to perform a couple of concerts in St John of Gods hospital.
‘We did a couple of concerts up there and that was a revelation to us,’ he says. ‘We hadn’t performed in over two and a half months. Being a musician is like being an athlete in a way — if you don’t exercise the muscle it atrophies to a degree. And it was just wonderful to have that connection through music with other people and to see the effect it was having on them. It was very emotional for us too.’ With the help of Blackwater Valley Opera Festival and Creative Ireland Gerald sourced funding for a series of concerts that would both help those in residential care and the musicians who had so suddenly found themselves out of work ‘All musicians stopped working overnight and I wanted to give them a sense of purpose, I guess. I was reading a lot of material about how a certain number of musicians would end up leaving the profession because once those contacts break down, it’s a precarious job at the best of times especially as a freelance artist or musician so I wanted to be able to give support to those people who didn’t have permanent jobs in the orchestra or teaching or anything like that.’
Things snowballed very quickly as the concerts took pace, the HSE and Healthy Ireland came on board to fund a five-county pilot project, they are in 13 now and the Covid Care Concerts are hoping to go nationwide.
Each week there are around 10 concerts in a county. They bring special guests and big names like Celine Byrne, Iarla O’Lionard, Séan Keane, Anthony Kearns and a whole host of others to various homes across the country, much to the delight of the residents.
‘We are playing outside care homes, psychiatric hospitals, direct provision centres and residential units for people with long term needs,’ Gerald says.
‘It has been hugely uplifting for the people we have met. We go in and play- it’s a great festive hour.’
‘Nobody else in Ireland is allowed to hear live music’
The orchestra sets up outside in a tent with a speaker system, performing as the residents look out their window or, now that the weather is getting better, they can sit outside in a socially distanced way. The players wear masks and deliver a set list of everything from opera classics to The Beatles at a time when there are no concerts anywhere else.
‘I am often teasing the residents and saying ‘Now, listen, keep this under your hat because nobody else in Ireland is allowed to hear live music,’ Gerald says.
‘We include the residents in choosing the music and we are working with some writers in some areas to help the residents journal and talks about the music.’ ‘We’ve had Celine Byrne, Anthony Kearns, Séan Keane is with us in Galway this week, we have Iarla O’Lionaird coming up, names people will know. ‘Our goal is to provide equality of access to the arts but also to show these people that they matter too and are not forgotten. That is something quite special that we have transmitted through the live performance.’ Indeed, some of the reactions the orchestra has received have been miraculous. ‘There was a lady on a psychiatric ward who was catatonic for six months,’ Gerald says. ‘She hadn’t communicated with anyone for six months and we were playing outside in the courtyard. A nurse walked by and asked her: “Are you enjoying the music?” And she answered: “Oh I am enjoying it very much thank you. I remember this song from my childhood.”
‘We had another lady in a nursing home who was in her nineties, she was singing along in her wheelchair and having quite a nice time. The director of nursing came up to us later and he looked quite pale. He told us “You have no idea, this lady has been with us two years now. She has been completely non-verbal and we didn’t realise she still has the capacity to verbalise. And yet she just sat there and sang all the words to your songs — it was just amazing, you have unlocked something there.’
Sometimes it’s even just the idea that people would take the time to visit that is important to the residents.
‘Another lady in her early nineties was late coming down to the concert we had last summer. I found out afterwards from her carers she had been in a really bad mood for the past two months and was going to stay in her room.
‘But she had been an opera lover her whole life and she used to go to the Theatre Royal. When she came out she recognised two of the musicians. She told us ‘I can’t believe I was such a fool, I was going to stay in my room and I would have missed this. I am just so grateful you came, you have made me so happy.’
The more famous faces sing from their own repertoire and the songs are tailored to ones the residents would know. Opera melts hearts, Abba will get the nurses up dancing while Que Sera Sera will be a sing-song, with big names who are more than willing to do their bit.
‘I would have worked with a lot of these people because I have been around for such a long time, ‘says Gerald. ‘Some are family — Sibéal the sean nos singer is my cousin and she was with us in Limerick. Anthony Kearns I know from working with him a lot but you usually wouldn’t be able to book him for less than 30 grand. But he’s here because he can’t travel and can’t work abroad. His heart was in the project as well, same with Celine Byrne, Claudia Boyle — they all want to be a part of it which is amazing.
‘When Celine sang, one lady in Dublin told her “I’ve been to every one of your Christmas specials and I was so sad that I couldn’t go and see you at Christmas but now here you are singing to me at my window.’’ She hadn’t expected that anything like that could happen to her. It’s the little things like that.’
As they play, the orchestra can see people starting to change — sitting a little bit straighter, moving a hand, tapping a foot. And sometimes residents will perform too, giving them back a confidence they had previously lost.
‘We make repeat visits to the homes and it gives them the chance to build up expectations about our visits. It’s really to give them a sense of purpose as well and some hope for the future.
‘We send a list of songs and they can choose what they want to hear in advance. Often on the spur of the moment they will ask us to play things and sometimes when they get to know us they will sing along with us. We had a man who was a brilliant singer and with a bit of encouragement got up and sang at the mic. And you could just see the confidence that was giving him, it was quite something to witness.
‘We are starting to make friends in a lot of the places we go and it is so wonderful to see the joy on their faces. It really does make us feel like we are doing something purposeful.
As normal life returns Gerald is determined to continue the concerts.
‘Music belongs to everybody,’ he says. ‘There should be no barriers to partaking and enjoying music. Why shouldn’t someone who lives in a home and isn’t able to travel because of disability or infirmity, why shouldn’t they have access to what’s going on in the Concert Hall or the O2? So to be able to bring that to their doorstep is important.’
The stories Gerald tells of the last year would melt the hardest heart and he admits there are moments when even they come close to a tear.
‘Sometimes a pandemic can be quite abstract for people,’ says Gerald. ‘We are all suffering in our own way and the restrictions are difficult. But what makes me mad is when people say getting Covid is not that bad when you’re seeing up close the effect this is having on these people who are having to be locked into homes and the people who are dying.
‘I would love to take someone in there for five minutes to show them what the level of suffering is. The best way I can deal with that is by doing something positive and trying to be an advocate for these people. ‘It was especially hard after Christmas as we took five weeks off because the numbers were so bad so we couldn’t go anywhere.’ he adds. ‘But when we were coming back to homes in February where we had been in December, some of the places we returned to had lost 50 per cent of the residents. At this stage we would have known these people by name or their faces so it is quite a shock when you see that wave of devastation. In some places staff that we knew died from Covid. There has been a lot of trauma in these environments but what we are witnessing now — and it is really empowering — is the ability to get through things and the great staff and carers who are making every effort to get people through this.’
With the vaccine rollout things are looking brighter.
‘We are seeing a change,’ says Gerald. ‘Getting the vaccination in all the homes has made such a difference to people’s mental health as well, it’s lovely to see things are looking up for them. It’s just wonderful to see the human spirit is surviving through this.’ O
‘The human spirit is surviving through this ’