Sounds of Summer, 2016.
Tower Hotel Waterford, May 2016
Written by Pat McEvoy, Arts Correspondent, Waterford News & Star, ‘A View from the Green Room’.
Sounds of Summer
The Tower Hotel is jammers for the Waterford Male Voice Choir’s ‘Sounds of Summer’ concert. No other arts group can sell tickets like this lot. In fact, I’m surprised there isn’t a marquee out the back with a video link.
Waterford Male Voice Choir is as well-tuned and professional an organisation as it gets. You can see the pride in the all-new, razor-sharp Tony Fitz blue suits. Nothing is left to chance. An informative programme, a clued-in front-of-house, a programme that zips along and a fifty-plus choir that enters and exits with precision and sharpness. And still manages time out for the bar. Everyone seems to know everyone and a varied and well-chosen programme promises a good night out.
This is their only fund-raiser for a choir that performs regularly for charity and the packed ballroom of the Tower is buzzing with bonhomie. I’m not surprised. If you’re going to sing in a choir, then the only dynamic is the shared dynamic of the group. It’s an all-for-one ethic where the common cause is the only cause.
A signature ‘Come the Sails’ opens with its floating melody hovering over a superb base line of Urbs Intacta Manet’ reverberating through the piece. Finding choral work as Gaeilge is not easy. Irish ballads are full of grace notes and sliding entries that lack a definite beat. So finding a sensitive arranger is vital. Br. Ben Hanlon’s arrangement of ‘Ar Éirinn, ní neosfainn’ is a dreamy tenor melody with murmuring bases that promise undying love. Choir member Declan Foley’s arrangement of the aisling ‘Mo Ghile Mear’ is a lustful throat-opener that seeks the return of the Great Pretender.
Their ‘Impossible Dream’ from Man of La Mancha is full of drama, conflict and resolve as is their great rallying call of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’ from Les Mis. Both songs show off the choir at their best. Musical Director Cian O’Carroll’s accurate phrasing and separation of parts ensures that the songs make complete sense to the audience and the final Les Mis chord is a gem.
Multi-talented musician Dylan Brown, recently Musical Director for Sister Act 2, plays the Beethoven Piano Sonata 24 nicknamed à Thérèse (because it was written for Countess Thérèse von Brunswick). The 24th sonata is the shortest and one of Beethoven’s brightest sonatas with its vigorous finale that seems worlds away from the storms of the Appassionata , his previous sonata composed five years earlier. A Ginestera piano sonata really emphasises the extremes of the piano’s range and makes great demands on young Dylan in what is one of the night’s highlights.
Photo Credit: Barrack Street Concert Band Facebook Page
Guest singing trio Dulcet is a popular trio on the night with their mix of popular jazz and swing. Numbers such as ‘You’d be so nice to come home to’ and ‘Dream a little Dream’ are cleverly arranged for the three voices that blend effortlessly.
The Barrack St Concert Band is a huge hit and their Rogers and Hammerstein medley has the audience singing along with hits from South Pacific, King and I, Carousel, Oklahoma and The Sound of Music. The band’s version of the Oscar-winning score of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ is packed with clashing discordant chords that captures all the flavour of the Orient. A ‘Pinball Wizard’ finale rocks with fun and laughter, with its trumpet solos and rattling percussion, and has me searching for lit-up noses, rocker-boots, striped socks and plus-fours. Musical Director Mark Fitzgerald’s band sure plays a mean pinball.
When the Male Voice Choir return to sing the ‘Schubert Die Nacht’ and the Gjeilo ‘Ubi Caritas’, it strikes me that the choir have now sung in English, Irish, German and Latin. The choir does well in coping with Schubert’s slow setting and significant key changes in a composition that always manages to hold its musical form. A Freddy Mercury ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, with its accelerated rhythms and barber-shop feel, is a toe-tapper that sends us rocking into a closing sequence with choir and band. A rousing ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ with its chorus of ‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah’ reminds me of great days in Kilcohan with Alfie, Tommo, Al, Johnno and the Blues when we followed the Barrack St Band on the way out to the match.
A very moving Guonod’s ‘Soldiers Chorus’ by the choir and band is yet another military song that speaks of home before the Kander and Ebb ‘New York, New York’ has us spreading the news that the Male Voice Choir is always seeking members and details can be found on its Facebook Page.
The concert is dedicated to the memory of the late Gerry Rush who was one of the four founder members of the choir and who dedicated so much of his young life to raising funds for charity. Gerry would have been especially pleased with an excellent concert and the choir’s Tony Fitz suits.