Tag Archives: Dean Power

ENNIS Cathedral Choir Director Fiona Walsh is hopeful a new musical programme launched this month will strike the right note when it comes to reinvigorating cathedral choral singing. The new Ennis Cathedral programme offers singing opportunities for youngsters, teenagers and adults with Fiona telling us, “We are really trying to elevate the music in the Cathedral and to attract people who really enjoy singing and give them an opportunity to get involved.” She adds, “A huge amount of choirs couldn’t really operate during Covid, we had music at the Cathedral but this is a way for us to get people back singing together.” Part of the new programme will be monthly performances at a special Sunday mass of music by the great church composers Mozart, Mozart, Gounod, Hadyn and Jenkins. Singers interested in joining the choir in delivering this programme are being encouraged to get involved. The adult choir is also actively recruiting 20 male and female teenage voices from …

CLARECASTLE tenor Dean Power will be among those performing at a special concert next month to celebrate James Joyce’s 140th birthday and the centenary of the publication of Ulysses. The concert on February 1  in the Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire will feature for the first time in Ireland, Geoffrey Molyneux Palmer’s settings of Joyce’s Chamber Music. As well as Dean’s singing, the performance will also feature Mairéad Hurley on piano and Susie Kennedy as the narrator. In 1907, the year of its publication, Palmer wrote to Joyce asking permission to set some poems from Chamber Music. Joyce enthusiastically received the ten songs he was sent and wrote, “I hope you will set all of Chamber Music in time” and “I shall be glad to hear from you and to know that your delicate music is meeting at last with the appreciation it deserves” Joyce tried to arrange publication of the songs on several occasions but Palmer was hesitant and it never happened. The reason for …