Latest news with #TheArmedMan:AMassforPeace
Irish Independent
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Acclaimed composer and poet unite to mark Bray Choral Society's anniversary
The Bray Choral Society, under the direction of Frank Kelly, presented a fabulous evening of music on Sunday, May 25, at Holy Redeemer Church, in celebration of its 40th anniversary. The programme featured a specially commissioned work by acclaimed composer Howard Goodall, 'The Creation Song of the Choir of Light', written to mark the choir's significant milestone. The highlight of the evening was The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace by Karl Jenkins, originally commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum. Composed in 1999. The work is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo conflict, part of the broader and devastating Balkan wars of the early 1990s. Accompanied by imagery projected on screens in the church, the performance was widely praised as both powerful and deeply moving and was met huge applause from a full Holy Redeemer Church. The performance in Bray followed a similarly spellbinding concert in St Andrew's Church, in Westland Row, on Saturday. Keith Brennan, the poet and farmer from Roscommon, was commissioned to write the lyrics to 'The Creation Song of the Choir of Light'. He told RTE's Philip Boucher Hayes how it came about and described working with Howard Goodall to compose the piece. 'Howard Goodall, had seen and heard my writing about my life on a small, unkempt, half-wild, Roscommon farm. And he thought to set some of that life and home to music. I have never done anything of the sort. To take my words and have them weaved into the sung air seemed, still seems, like a kind of magic,' he said. "The piece begins on a morning on the farm. The ragged thorn hedges. The curl of wind through trees. The rising tide of birdsong that breaks over the fields. I talk to Howard. Of pine martins. Sapphire-eyed sparrowhawks. Of farmer friends in love with cuckoos and swallows. Of the leverets I find in the rushy lee of a field. The furious greening that grips the spring world. 'The ramshackle hedges and pastures that let slip tumbles of wildflowers from the fields that flow out and along roads and across woodlands. He talked to me of choral music. Of Brexit and of culture wars. The public and private loneliness of Covid. Of how community can be made by music. Song. 'And because, as both Howard and I believe, wherever we share with one another the experience of beautiful things, the divides are blurred,' he continued. 'The gap between people close and is bridged. We are pulled a little closer in the sharing. And in the sharing we build community. So it is in my farm. So it is in my neighbours' fields. And so it will be, I think, when the choir sing.'
Otago Daily Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Packed audience treated to powerful work
The Southern Youth Choir and Chamber Orchestra are directed by John Buchanan in a performance of The Armed Man to a capacity audience at St Paul's Cathedral in Dunedin yesterday. PHOTO: GERARD O'BRIEN Southern Youth Choir The Armed Man St Paul's Cathedral Sunday, May 25 St Paul's Cathedral was a sellout yesterday afternoon for a performance by Southern Youth Choir (director John Buchanan) of The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. The Armed Man is an anti-war work composed in 2000 by Karl Jenkins, using liturgical Latin Mass text, prose and poetry from other religions, assembled by librettist Guy Wilson. The event began with the SYC Chamber Choir, conducted by Noah McBirney-Warner in Geistliches Leid (Brahms) and a beautiful setting of Psalm 23 The Lord is my Shepherd (Rutter), with oboe obligato and counter-melodies (Callum Fotheringham) and organ (David Burchell). The Southern Youth Choir, currently with 60 members, organ and chamber orchestra (including three percussionists) then presented an absolutely outstanding 70-minute performance, full of dynamic contrast and emotion, expressing war, horror and loss, ending with a prayer for a peaceful future. As the final words faded to silence, the entire audience sprang to a standing ovation until the very last performer had left the stage. So deserved. Choir members taking solos were soprano Rosie Auchinvole, alto Tessa Campbell, tenor Teddy Finney Waters and bass Ewen Clarke-Wallace. The opening Mass simulated a marching army with drum beat, then a gradual orchestral build-up assembled the choir, singing 15th century text The Armed Man. Style and pace matched the beginning of war; Adhaan, a Muslim call to prayer, Kyrie, Sanctus, Hymn Before Action, with text by Rudyard Kipling ("Lord grant us strength to die"). The climax came with Charge — a long drawn-out chorus of screaming and wailing depicting the worst action of war, followed by silence and Last Post (Ralph Miller). So effective. An excerpt from the poem Angry Flames, about the horrors of Hiroshima, Torches, Agnus Dei, Benedictus and lines by Tennyson's Better is Peace completed the work. Text in the programme enabled full understanding of each section in this epic, never-to-be-forgotten performance. Review by Elizabeth Bouman
