Choir scales new heights on cusp of 30th year

There they were, 27 Galway choristers rehearsing in the august surroundings of Casa De Pilatos, a 15th century palace in the picturesque southern Spanish city of Seville.

It doesn’t get much better than this, thought the director of the Cois Cladaigh Chamber Choir, Brendan O’Connor, who was struck by the splendour of the building , famous for its Italian Renaissance and Spanish Mudéjar styles and held up as the quintessential Andalusian palace.

Its permanent resident, the Duke of Medinaceli, had just introduced himself to the group and had spoken about how one of his ancestors was an O’Connor.

Then the phone rang. Brendan was told to hang on the line for a call from the Department of the Taoiseach. He thought there must have been a problem with a lost passport among the group of 55 who had travelled for the tour of Seville and Córdoba.

“When he asked would we like to sing at Michael D’s inauguration I was flabbergasted. I said to the group it’s all very well to be singing for the Duke and all his Dukey friends but we’re now in a different league,” he laughed.

As it happened the moment is captured on camera for posterity. The group had travelled with two cameramen who are recording footage of the choir for a film to mark its 30th anniversary next year.

The impending engagement gave an added frisson of excitement to the three-date tour. They were told almost immediately what the repertoire would be at the ceremony so they were able to sneak in auditions in the November Andalusian sunshine.

Performing alongside the Defence Forces School of Music at St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle, they were to perform Be Thou My Vision, Make Me a Channel, Amhrán na bhFiann and The Deer’s Cry, which was written by Shaun Davey and sang by his wife Rita Connolly.

At the request of Michael D, they would also do a rendition of Beannacht, the poem written by the late Galway based philosopher John O’Donohue, with music by Éamonn Murray, who is the choir’s répétiteur (musician who helps the singers to learn their parts on the piano).

At first the Department stipulated that only be 20 singers could be used for the occasion.

Brendan was adamant that they could only do justice to the Beannacht piece with no less than 25. In the end he cheated and sneaked in 27 singers, but even culling the numbers down to that from 42 members was a fraught task.

“It broke my heart,” sighs Brendan.

“The first thing I insisted was that only the people who’d sang it before made the first cut. For the second cut I gave first preference to those who made the effort to go to Spain.

“Even at that some people couldn’t go. One member was a surgeon who couldn’t come because of a patient and another was a mother who couldn’t bear to be away from her young baby. It was tough.”

The result was a pure triumph. The choir was singled out as a highlight for much of audience who attended the inauguration and it marked the single biggest occasion for the choir, whose roots lie in Michael D’s old alma mater.

“We had three rehearsals and one on the final day with the Army Band and Rita. It was particularly stress free which I was surprised at because we hadn’t worked with either of them before. At the end of it they were just buzzing. Some of them started sitting in Michael D’s chair so there was a lot of giggling. We had an impromptu session in one of the side rooms when it was all over,” recalls Brendan.

“It still hasn’t sunk in yet what we were part of. The response has been amazing.”

Brendan became the director of the UCG (now NUIG) choir while studying marine biology in 1972 after just two years as a member when the previous director left to study. But by 1980 he had to give it up to concentrate on his PhD, which was a study of the animals who lived in Galway Bay.

Two years later, one of the singers from the college choir, Maura Mathews, told him she was going set up a new choir and asked him to be the director.

“I had no musical training, I couldn’t read music at all. I was a total chancer. I’ve got a bit better at it now,” he explains.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.