CELEBRATE IRELAND IN CONCERT!
Enjoy the thrilling concert as a 2-CD set!
RECORDED LIVE in the Washington National Cathedral.
Includes the complete 16-page libretto, and 6 additional tracks.
Makes a terrific holiday gift!
For Selected Audio Samples, click here –
CELEBRATE IRELAND IN CONCERT!
RECORDED LIVE in the Washington National Cathedral.
Includes the complete 16-page libretto, and 6 additional tracks.
Makes a terrific holiday gift!
For Selected Audio Samples, click here –
It is important that the bonds connecting Ireland and the U.S. are constantly renewed and refreshed. Music and poetry speak to the heart and have always provided a vital expression of Irish identity. It is a great honour for me to be part of this celebration of Ireland's history in music and poetry.
Ireland's Poet-Patriots is...a centenary's worth of talent in one production. For those of us who are passionate about Ireland's fierce weave of longing and desire for justice, the country's hold on a vision of independence and democracy in even the harshest times, Richard B. Evans' work of art is sublime. I felt as if all the Irish history I'd ever read, known, or thrilled to was brought back to me, almost as if in a dream. Ireland's Poet-Patriots, A Musical History, is a cultural treasure.
The concert itself was amazing. The musicians were terrific and I now have more stars of sean nos to add to my growing list. Since I am also a fan of poetry, opera, choral music, and modern classical, there was so much to love.
A MUSICAL TRIBUTE
American Composer Richard B. Evans celebrates Ireland with a concert of original classical crossover and Irish traditional tunes that vividly bring to life the words of 12 of Ireland’s great Poet-Patriots – from Aindreas Mac Craith and Donncha Rua Mac Conmara to Robert Emmet, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, James Connolly, Padraic Pearse, WB Yeats, Maud Gonne and more – in a timeless musical tribute to Ireland’s heroic past and luminous future.
The cast includes premier musicians from Ireland, three classical vocalists, a chorus of 25 mixed voices, a 28-piece concert orchestra with harp, piano and pipe organ, and an Irish Traditional music ensemble of fiddle, uilleann pipes, pennywhistles, Celtic harp, button accordion, Irish flute and bodhrán. Narrators intersperse brief comments that explain how each musical piece illustrates an important event or movement in 140 years of Irish history.
The musical movements feature Protestant and Catholic authors in equal numbers, and the final choral number is a benediction based on a poem of reconciliation by the Irish mystic poet A.E., titled "Immortality."
IRELAND'S POET-PATRIOTS
A Musical Tribute
A 2.5 minute video preview –

IRELAND’S POET-PATRIOTS logo designed by Richard Bagel and Debra Wakefield and features the following images:
• the face of Pádraic Pearse as a young man
• the arms and body of James Larkin in his famous oratory pose
• photos of William Butler Yeats and his muse Maud Gonne
• the tattered Irish flag that flew over the GPO during the Easter Rising
• a Celtic cross carved from bone in the Frongoch prison camp where some Irish prisoners were sent after the 1916 Rising
• in the background within the frame, the red rose that Yeats uses as one of his metaphors for Ireland
• at the corners of the frame, a design from the Book of Kells
• in the overall background, a page from the score of IRELAND’S POET-PATRIOTS
