Musical Saw, Irish Bodhrán and Jew's Harp featured in Irish themed Cantata March 30, 2007

The month of March is full of Irish lore due to St. Patrick’s Day. This year a new dramatic cantata, ‘The Rose of Tralee’ (Irish title: "An Rós Thrá Lí") by composer Mark N. Grant will cap NYC’s celebrations of all things Irish.
The world premiere will be presented by New York's AmorArtis Chorus and Orchestra on Friday March 30, 2007 at 8:00 p.m. at Church of the Blessed Sacrament, 152 West 71st Street, New York, New York. Tickets are $20 general admission; $15 for students.

The 50-minute Rose of Tralee will be conducted by AmorArtis's longtime music director Johannes Somary and features soloists Michael Steinberger, tenor; Cynthia Richards Wallace, soprano; Richard Holmes, bass-baritone; SSATB chorus, and a 32-piece orchestra, and includes extended parts for such unusual instruments as the Irish bodhrán (frame drum), the musical saw (played by Natalia Paruz - a.k.a. the ‘Saw Lady’ www.SawLady.com), and the jew's harp as played by a musician trained as an Irish fiddler. The cantata also includes some spoken dialogue, as well as singing, in Irish.
AmorArtis toured Ireland in the late 1990s performing with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and winning acclaim from the Irish Times.

Grant's musical idiom in this work draws equally from traditional Irish music and from opera and choral music. In its five scenes the music variously evokes step dancing, druid rites, nineteenth century ballroom waltzes, folksong, Latin plainchant, and other styles.

The Rose of Tralee also strikingly memorializes one of history's atrocities, the Irish potato famine of the late 1840s, in a blistering choral scene that may be the first attempt at depicting this horrific event– An Gorta Mór– on the musical stage.

While the title is familiar to many as that of the 19th century song "The Rose of Tralee" popularized by the great Irish tenor John McCormack on recordings and in the movies in the 1930s, Grant's composition is entirely new, quoting neither music nor lyrics from the song. The Rose of Tralee is also the name of an international beauty pageant held since 1959 in Tralee, Ireland every August. The beauty competition got its title from the song and the legend it retells about William Pembroke Mulchinock, a tragic Traleean.

The composer's own libretto– written in English, Latin, and Munster Gaelic– is a "magic realism" reimagining of the real life of Mulchinock (1820-1864), a "Young Ireland movement" poet and journalist for the Irish nationalist newspaper The Nation. Mulchinock is called by his Irish name Liam Maoilsíonóg in Grant's cantata.

According to County Kerry legend, Mulchinock was forced to leave his native country for war service in India because political and social problems prevented his marrying a beautiful local girl (the "rose" of the title). What is historically certain is that Mulchinock later emigrated to New York City, where he published an acclaimed book of poetry in 1851. But around 1855 he left his new wife and daughters stateside and returned to Tralee. Immediately upon his arrival there, according to legend, he encountered the funeral procession of the girl he had been forced to leave behind years earlier, and as a result went into a mental collapse from which he never recovered. Today there is a memorial to William Pembroke Mulchinock in Tralee Town Park in Tralee, Ireland.

The composer, Mark N. Grant, is also an ASCAP Deems Taylor award-winning writer for both his books Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music Criticism in America and The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical. Last year he became the first recipient of the Friedheim Award for contemporary music composition since the Friedheim Award was last presented at the Kennedy Center in 1993. Grant's music has been hailed by New Music Connoisseur as "exquisite...[with] truly amazing lyrical moments that contrast beautifully with passages of unbearable emotional intensity." AmorArtis, now in its 46th New York season, is known internationally for its diverse repertoire of works from the renaissance through the present century and has made more than fifty recordings.

Amor Artis, best known for its authentic, award-winning performances of works from the baroque period, also has performed 20th century cantatas by George Antheil, Carlos Surinach, Ernst Toch, Robert Starer, and Maestro Somary. In recent seasons Amor Artis performed choral works by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Poulenc, Weill, and Gorecki, and also gave New York premieres of choral/orchestral works of lesser-known contemporary composers such as David Kraehenbuhl.

The March 30 program also features a performance of Anton Bruckner's Requiem.

For ticket reservations call 212-874-4513. Tickets can be purchased using Visa, Mastercard, or American Express or by check with self-addressed stamped envelope to AmorArtis, c/o MPL Productions, 3330 Broadway, New York, NY 1003

Official Website: http://www.SawLady.com