Tinteán

Event: 1916  Commemorative Concert in Bendigo to be presented by the Central Victorian Irish Association

Where: Old Fire Station, View Street, Bendigo (part of the Capital Complex) 

When: Saturday 15th October at 8 pm and Sunday 16th October at 5 pm.   

Cost: Tickets can be booked with The Capital on 54346100  or www.gotix.com.au
Early booking is advised, as the Old Fire Station holds less than 100 people.  

Further information: Johnann.clancy@gmail.com

The concert takes the nature of a semi production, which will tell the story of the Rising through the media of narrative, dance, drama, visual images, music and song.  Writer and director of the concert is John Clancy, who has produced a number of similar concerts in Bendigo over the past twelve years.  The concert will be divided into four parts:

• Part 1  – The Antecedents of the Rising. Songs, dance, and readings relating to The Gaelic League,  World War I,  The Irish Citizens Army,  the Fenians, will all be featured here.

• Part 2.  Poets and Patriots  –  The poetry of Padraig Pearce, Thomas Mc Donough, and Joseph Mary Plunkett, read as poetry or performed as art songs. The premieres of two art songs, one by Irish composer Anne Marie O’Farrell and the other by John Clancy, will be performed in this section.  There will also be a song in indigenous Brazilian as a tribute to Roger Casement.

• Part 3 – the 1916 Rising itself. This section will give particular prominence to the raising of the Irish flags over the GPO.  For this section John Clancy has composed a song titled  ‘The Ballad of Eamonn Bulfin’ to honour the young Irish-Argentine who raised one of the two flags.

• Part 4: The Aftermath of the Rising.  This section will be particular dramatic.  It will feature two operatic arias, to be sung in English by tenor Michael Gillies-Smith, to represent the trial and the execution of an unnamed  leader of the Rising,  with the drama of the scenes included. The story of the marriage of Joseph Mary Plunkett and Grace Gillard will also be told in song.

The concert will conclude with a triumphant dance to represent the triumph of Ireland, to be performed by the O’Shea Ryan Irish dancers.  The Irish national anthem sung in Irish by a specially trained group will of course conclude the production.

Poetry and  songs in the Irish language will be a feature of this event.  The songs of the concert will be selected from traditional ballads and folk songs, and it is hoped to have some Irish instrumental music as well. At one point the audience will be transported back a century to Easter Monday 1916. All in all, this semi production will play tribute to the heroes of 1916, and the diversity of songs, poems, drama, should appeal to a wide cross section of tastes.

John Clancy is a member of the CVIA and a theatre producer, director and performer.