The Washington DC concert was an event to be remembered!
IRELAND'S POET-PATRIOTS IN CONCERT
Washington National Cathedral
Washington, DC
October 12, 2017
PURCHASE THE 2-CD SET OF THIS LIVE CONCERT HERE.
Perhaps you caught the public radio broadcast on St. Patrick's Day!
Washington DC's WETA Classical Radio 90.9 fm
Saturday, March 17, 2018 @ 9pm EDT
Washington, DC
October 12, 2017
Perhaps you caught the public radio broadcast on St. Patrick's Day!
Saturday, March 17, 2018 @ 9pm EDT
Narrators:
H.E. Daniel Mulhall
Ambassador of Ireland to the U.S.
Chris Matthews
American political commentator, talk show host, and author
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Patricia Harty
Editor and Co-Founder, Irish America Magazine
Susan Davis
Owner, Susan Davis International
Mark Tuohey
Director of the DC Mayor's Office of Legal Counsel
Gov. Martin O'Malley
Governor of Maryland, 2007–2015
Featured Irish Musicians:
Muireann nic Amhlaoibh, sean nós singer, Irish flute
County Kerry
Christy O’Leary, sean nós singer, uilleann pipes
County Kerry
Derek Ryan, Irish bass-baritone
County Tipperary
Aimée Farrell-Courtney, bodhrán
Dublin
Washington DC Classical Soloists:
Esther Heideman, Operatic Soprano
Matthew L Smith, Operatic Tenor
Washington DC Irish Trad Musicians:
Billy McComiskey, button accordion
Mitch Fanning, fiddle, violin
Maestro Scott Tucker
Conductor
Prior to accepting his post with the Choral Arts Society, Scott was the Director of Choral Activities at Cornell University. During his 17-year leadership there his choirs toured nationally and internationally and were featured on NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Scott Tucker, Conductor
Richard B. Evans
Composer
Thus, as an American composer, IRELAND’S POET-PATRIOTS, A Musical Tribute, is an expression of my profound love of Ireland, her music, her people and her culture, and the poetic impulse that is so profoundly rooted in the Irish soul.
In the most personal way, Ireland and her people have been in the core of my heart from a very young age. I began my musical studies at age 5, learning and playing every form of classical, popular and liturgical music available. After my graduate studies, I became active in American avant garde music. Then, musically and personally, my horizons were expanded immeasurably by my discovery of, study of, and enthusiasm for Irish literature and ‘trad’ music, which led me to spending many years traveling to Ireland, gratefully absorbing her culture along the way. It was an instant love affair for me that has never wavered, and it lives with equal passion alongside my work in ‘classical European’ music and American musical theater.
I am always inspired by the work of Seán Ó Riada, who built bridges between Ireland’s deep, beloved and uniquely engaging Traditional music and the emotional breadth of European classical music.
It is because of Ó Riada’s insights that I have dared, in IRELAND’S POET-PATRIOTS, to imagine the exquisite poems of W. B. Yeats and Ella Young in the musical language of art songs; the stirring words of Maud Gonne and Padraic Pearse in the dramatic musical language of opera; the powerful words of O’Donovan Rossa and James Connolly set to well-known Irish traditional tunes; Robert Emmet’s speech before his execution, George William Russell’s mystical reverie, and Pearse and Connolly’s brilliant words of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in liturgical musical language; interspersed with segments of Irish traditional music, both sean nós vocals and instrumental tunes, standing proudly on their own."
Richard B. Evans, Composer
IRELAND'S POET-PATRIOTS
A Musical Tribute
A concert of the writings of 12 of Ireland’s great poets and patriots set to original crossover and Irish Traditional music – composed, adapted, arranged and written by Richard B. Evans.
A 2.5 minute video preview –
