The Milkman of Human Kindness

If you're in Dublin next Saturday (16 May), why not come and hear the Mornington Singers concert in the Pro Cathedral? I have tickets for sale, if you're interested; they're also available online.

We're singing mostly modern music from Britain and America, and there's some really amazing stuff in there. Our conductor has a gift for programme choice - she seems to nail it every time.

The two settings of "When David Heard", in particular, knock my socks off. The Tomkins is lovely curly baroque, and the Whitacre is astonishing. (Mind you, I have trouble singing the words "Absalom, my son, would god I had died for thee" without my stomach turning over. This is very much the point of the story, I suppose. Probably adds to my performance...)

We're also singing Barber's Adagio for Strings, aka the Platoon theme. And we're doing the Barber piece that the choir performed at niallm's and my wedding in 2005: Reincarnations no. 3, "The Coolin", which I chose because its text (translated by James Stephens from the Irish of Raifteirí) gives me goose-bumps. Allow me:

Come with me, under my coat,
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat,
Or wine if it be thy will;

And we will talk until
Talk is a trouble, too,
Out on the side of the hill,
And nothing is left to do,

But an eye to look into an eye
And a hand in a hand to slip,
And a sigh to answer a sigh,
And a lip to find out a lip:

What if the night be black
And the air on the mountain chill,
Where the goat lies down in her track
And all but the fern is still!

Stay with me, under my coat,
And we will drink our fill
Of the milk of the white goat
Out on the side of the hill.

Anyway. If you're into choral music at all, it'll be a fun evening. See you there?

LEONARD COHEN last Saturday OMG OMG OMG! OMFG! He's seventy-three, and we (my sister, my parents, kulfuldi and I) bought our tickets largely on the basis that he almost certainly won't play in Dublin again. And he was ... just. Utterly. Stunning. He performed for three hours, and the only thing wrong with the gig, from my point of view, was that he didn't do every song he's ever recorded. And I include "Jazz Police" in that. Srsly. I mean, I wasn't exactly expecting "Teachers" or "Avalanche" or "Dress Rehearsal Rag" or "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong", but ... well, he rehabilitated "Ain't No Cure For Love" for me, which is saying something.

He didn't do many of the oldies - "Suzanne", "Bird on a Wire", "Who By Fire?" - possibly because he had a six-piece band and preferred to do the big-sound stuff he's focussed on since the 80s. But he started with "Dance Me to the End of Love", fergawdsake! And he did "I'm Your Man"! And all six verses of "Hallelujah"! And "The Future"! And "Take This Waltz"! And "Tower of Song" (featuring himself on keyboard for the plinky bit)! And "Anthem"! And and and stuff I didn't recognise but now have to buy! And a poem ("A Thousand Kisses Deep")! And then he finished up with "First We Take Manhattan", went off, came back and did a few more, finished with "Closing Time", went off, came back and started again with "I Tried to Leave You"! Ahahaha, Leonard, I see what you did there.

He had one memory lapse - sang a verse of "Democracy" twice - but other than that it was, as far as I could tell, a flawless performance. He was dressed in a grey suit and a fedora, doffed his hat and bowed slightly to receive applause, gave plenty of praise to his musicians and backing singers - in short, generally epitomised charm and gentlemanliness. (Funny line: "I last stood up on stage almost fifteen years ago. I was sixty years of age - a young man with a crazy dream...") More than that, though, he epitomised, for me, a genuinely inspiring dedication to his art. There was no posturing (OK, a little kneeling, a little dancing), no rambling patter, just understated brilliance, a straightforward delivery of songs that are still some of the most thoughtfully constructed, beautifully polished pieces of writing I've ever encountered.

I'm really no good at the whole self-publicity thing. Should've posted this ages ago, but I've been procrastinating for no good reason.

Ahem.

*shuffles feet, collects thoughts*

Come to our concert!

That is, if you're free this Saturday, 8 April, at 8pm, and within reach of the Pro Cathedral, Marlborough Street, Dublin 1, and enjoy choral music, come to our concert. It's going to be pretty good, though I say it as shouldn't. We're doing a particularly wide range of stuff (which all, mysteriously, seems to hang together), including melty Purcell, ribald Monteverdi (yeah, "die", hur-hur-hur), tongue-in-cheek Pärt (it's a setting of Jesus's lineage from the Gospel of Luke - what's not to like?), OK-somewhat-grating Ligeti (but you'll get over it), mercifully brief Wilson (although it's growing on me...), Procrustified Bach (you'll know what I mean when you hear it), swoony Kocsár, swoopy Martin, soupy Alcaraz, folk song settings in Hungarian and Ingrian Finnish, some Hogan- and Johnson- arranged spirituals, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Did I mention the Zulu wedding song?

Tickets are €12 (full) / €6 (concession) at the door, but choir members can sell them in advance at a WHOPPINGLY REDUCED PRICE of €10 / €5.

Go on. It'd be a sin not to.