ANÚNA was born as An Uaithne on an Autumnal evening in Dublin in 1987. According to Michael McGlynn its founder and Artistic Director.

“I’d spent the five years since leaving school absorbing as much music as I was capable of retaining. Those few years had introduced me to medieval and contemporary music through my studies in University College Dublin, but more crucially I had been exposed to the sheer wonder of choral music for the first time and I desperately wanted to express and broadcast this beautiful new discovery to anyone that would listen.

I created An Uaithne blissfully unaware of the need for the classical music industry to put music into boxes. To me music was all the same. I could shuffle on the same cassette tape from Debussy to David Bowie, from Clannad to Ligeti, from Machaut to The Clash. Each piece for me, regardless of the so-called genre of it, had its own story and each story had a validity all of its own. I suppose it is my lack of willingness to accept that music needs to be categorised and filed into boxes that defines the ethos of ANÚNA today. Back in 1987 my ignorance of such things, coupled with a passionate desire to create a form of choral music to suit my own personal vision, gave birth to something which ultimately has changed my life.

The first performance by An Uaithne was in September 1987 in Trinity College Dublin. I had been accepted to Trinity to study for a Master’s degree in English Literature and immediately joined the chamber choir there called Trinity College Singers. Eventually I became the conductor, but a lack of auditionees from the Music department and from the previous year’s ensemble resulted in me being forced to reach out to the entire college to find singers for the group. Although it was initially dispiriting, it actually worked out for the best. When the student body realised that the group was accessible to everyone, places were very quickly filled with an assortment of people from every part of the university.

Even at this very early stage I felt that a chorus whose members were on an adventure together and had minimal experience of choral music was preferable to singers who came with expectations that I personally had little interest in accommodating.

I was never less than ambitious and have nothing but happy memories of this group. Crucially, An Uaithne grew out of this ensemble to help fill out our concert programmes and also to perform more challenging material with a smaller group”

After leaving Trinity, An Uaithne expanded and developed, and the concerts became more unconventional.

“I remember an early concert of An Uaithne that featured Henry Purcell’s Ode to Saint Cecilia paired with Benjamin Britten’s “Hymn to Saint Cecilia” in the first part of the concert and a collection of medieval and Irish songs, which included one of my own, but also featured choral arrangements I had done of pieces by the Irish group Clannad. The finale of that concert was in front of a full house at St. Ann’s Church in Dublin, a raucous cacophony of viols, recorders, harps and singers lashing out Clannad’s arrangement of “Dúlamán”.

The mainstream music audience in and around Dublin began to pay attention to the group and a healthy buzz could be felt around the concerts. They even released an unimaginatively titled cassette that is now somewhat of a collector’s item. In December 1990 the choir recorded a track with Producer/Engineer Brian Masterson, who remains Michael’s chief recording collaborator today. In 1991 a concert at Dublin's Project Arts Centre heralded a crystallisation of all the ideas that had been floating around up to that time.

“The music itself was pretty eclectic, something that has sustained the ensemble over thirty years. I had grown so much in confidence myself that the bulk of the concert featured my own compositions.

We presented a “show” rather than just a concert, with movement, lights and sound amplification. Even the weak puddle of dry ice that managed only to splutter across the edge of the stage was more-than-a-bit thrilling to behold and the overall performance probably one of the most avant garde presentations that we have done. The concert included the first performance of "The Rising of the Sun", specially commissioned by the Project Arts Centre and a collection of contemporary Irish choral music by various composers. The response to my own music was overwhelming and it gave me the confidence to focus on arrangements and original compositions of my own. 

Michael’s brother John McGlynn joined the group at this point bringing a common sense approach to the performances.

“He kept drawing me back to the fact that elitism should have no place in any genre of music, constantly emphasising that there was no point in doing this at all if it couldn’t be communicated to everyone rather than the few who claimed to appreciate and understand choral music.

At this time I began to explore the connections between music and ritualistic movement. Movement has historically been part of communal music making, from the earliest era of the Christian Church through to the processions and secular dramas that became popular in the Middle Ages.

While many choirs move in performance none move quite like we do. So much is dependent on the space we sing in, the connections inherent in the spaces we inhabit as artists. Singing into the space encouraged me to create music designed for movement and space. Many of the works that define ANÚNA today were developed during this time and how something is presented to the audience has become more important than technical perfection”.

Anyone who has seen ANÚNA in performance will probably have seen them perform Michael’s arrangement of the Irish song “Jerusalem”.

“I’ve never spoken about the creation of this piece before. The first performance of the work was in 1991 in Trinity College Dublin Chapel. I wanted to emulate the sounds of the sea, undulating and whispering. But nothing ethereal. It had to be forceful and powerful, still and yet ever-changing.

I had already experienced Gaelic Psalm Singing and that had inspired me to approach this work in a similar way, with a cantor and response. Psalm singing is about a congregation of voices, each singing its own hymn of adulation, but unified in a spectacularly random way.

Most of all the arrangement had to be simple.

We tried performing ”Jerusalem” static at first with the women placed all over the venue, but it was the simple act of getting them to walk around the space that was the key to the magic. The voices moving so close to the audiences, the singers each identifiable and unique. Human and yet producing a sound that was almost inhuman when combined. Singing alone, but unified with one intent.

I can’t describe my reaction adequately, but a humble, slightly stumbling performance opened up a gateway to something that I still don’t understand fully”.

1991 also produced Michael’s "Celtic Mass" which contains the essence of the past and future of An Uaithne, and it was at this point that the group changed its name to ANÚNA.

“The Celtic Mass was a commission originally and ended up being a compilation of different pieces loosely woven together. Hidden within it were ideas that still obsess me today. The cold, inhuman voices of the angels of “Sanctus” contrast with the muscular exclamation of the “Kyrie”. The Celtic Mass probably contains an essence of many of the things I wanted to say about the nature of music.”

In October 1992 the first ANÚNA demo recordings were made in Windmill Lane Studios yielding the tracks "Salve Rex Gloriae" and "The Rising of the Sun". Collaborations arose with Sting and the Chieftains on the Grammy Award willing album “The Long Black Veil” and their voices graced the soundtrack of the Sullivan/Bluth animated film Thumbelina, a classic of the period, which they recorded with Barry Manilow.

“Here we were, a group of very young, very inexperienced singers recording for someone who was beyond a legend. He said nothing at the start of the session. I suppose our utter lack of perspective allowed us to think we were capable of doing something that there were professional choruses for in London and Los Angeles.

But I do remember when that particular sound we make began to show through the bad sight-reading and technical problems after a long period of silence from the control room. He started to talk, and even managed to sound excited by the end of the session.