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Celtic choir holds extraordinary , crystal power
Strawberry Moon Festival in Ottawa on June 20th. 1998, by kind permission of Rick Overall, who wrote it for the following day's edition of The Ottawa Sun newspaper.
As Anúna closed their Strawberry Moon concert last night they sang about a moment of perfect peace. For those of us in the audience that peace had lasted an entire evening. This 18-voice choir from Dublin is heralded for their legendary vocal expertise, and their presence at Saunders Farm in Munster was enough to draw fans from across North America.
But only those intimate with their concert work could have imagined such a powerful and spiritual event would take place.
Led by founder Michael McGlynn, the group took all the positive elements of Irish singing and married them with the textures of monastic and religious choral work.
They arrived on stage with the all-male vocals of August. Then velvet-clad women appeared in a procession and began a journey that was surely the purest, most moving combination of voices we've ever heard. What sets Anúna apart from others is the way McGlynn has woven historic text into a web of vocal arrangements unlike any other. The constant movement of the group into different positions added to the drama. At times members would walk into the crowd and join others on microphones positioned by torches. There was only sparse musical accompaniment so the extraordinary textures they produced were absolutely clear.
Throughout the program they slid between the religious - like a Lord's Prayer [Pater Noster] which was a setting from the Mass - to the more contemporary. There were delicate reworkings, like the version of Pentangle's When I Was In My Prime, and the classic Irish ballad She Moved Through The Fair.
They even allowed for two breaks where the skills of the Ottawa Academy of Irish Dance was amply demonstrated.
But the most extraordinary moment came when the women of Anúna peformed the 16th-century piece Jerusalem - both from the audience and the stage. They did it with a style that had each singer offering her part at a different moment. It was like a waterfall of cascading angelic voices that washed over everyone and served to make a memorable performance even more so.