Kennedy to livestream Christmas special on FB

Brian Kennedy at Carnegie Hall on Dec. 9, 2019.

By Irish Echo Staff

Brian Kennedy, who has been doing shows online throughout 2020, will livestream from Dublin via Facebook his first ever Christmas special on this Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern. For tickets, visit here.

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Brothers unite

Echo readers will know Joe Behan as a soccer coach and writer. More recently, though, he has been taking on other themes directly related to our times in a transAtlantic collaboration with his brother Mick, who is based in the family’s old neighborhood of Ringsend in Dublin. The result is “Waiting for Yadot.”

Television producer and author Anthony Lappé says: “The Brothers Behan new compilation of poetry is as timely as it is poignant. Their clever laments on the techno-takeover of our consciousness evoke a nostalgia for the Ireland of their youth but they are anything but trite. They vividly paint a picture of community, trust and family that so many of us feel slipping away - if we were ever lucky enough to have in the first place. Ireland in the ‘70s may have been one of Europe's economic disaster stories, but for the Behan Brothers it was an emotional Shangri La. They sing of life in the narrow streets, of friends made and lost, of funerals and collective pain and joy. In a change of pace, a long form narrative epic poem imagines a supernatural figure named Yadot.”

The volume is available on Kindle via Amazon for $2.95.

Joe Behan.

New UCD album

The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin have a new recording out. “Be All Merry” features three new pieces written for the Choral Scholars: the title track, by Irish composer Eoghan Desmond; Timothy Stephens’s “The Adoration of the Magi;” and an expansive setting of the Advent plainsong hymn “Christe, Redemptor omnium” by Ivo Antognini.

Desmond Earley.

The recording also includes arrangements of traditional Irish carols or texts - “Curoo, Curoo,” an 18th-century Irish poem set by composer Elaine Agnew in response to a commission by the Irish broadcaster RTE; a setting of W.B. Yeats’s poetry; “Cró na Nollag,” a lullaby composed by a father-son duo; an Irish-language setting of the traditional Scottish tune “Suantraí;” and “The Wexford Carol,” arranged by founding Artistic Director of the Choral Scholars Desmond Earley. The Irish Chamber Orchestra joins the Choral Scholars for several tracks on the album, including “The Wexford Carol” and Earley’s arrangement of “Carol of the Bells.”

 

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