How it’s New York: Church of St. Luke In The Fields, The Western Wind Sextet, and The Irish Arts Center are in New York City
How it’s Irish: Many of the composers, singers and songs at the holiday concerts, including Martha Sullivan, Mick Moloney and The Greenfields of America, are Irish or of Irish descent
On December 8th, The Grammy-nominated Western Wind Sextet, celebrating its 50th year in 2019, welcomed three new members at their Home For The Holidays – From Darkness To Light concert at Church of St. Luke In The Fields. Organized around themes including “Food & Fun”, “Miracles” and “Holiday Messages”, the event, which featured Chanukkah and Christmas songs from across the globe, including The UK, Poland, Canada and Lithuania, the program explored the rich cultures, stories and traditions of the two holidays.
The night opened with the moving “Lazarus” by ASCAP composer Martha Sullivan, featuring the words of poet Emma Lazarus. As she explained in the program notes, though the song’s title comes from three people – the poet, Lazarus the Beggar and Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary – Sullivan had inspiration from modern times. “The immigration and worldwide refugee crises demand a response: privilege may allow us to ignore those who are less fortunate, but it also gives us the tools to do better.”
An uptempo Yiddish folk song, Tsindt On Lichtelech (Light Little Candles), written by Mordkhe Riversman, paints a joyful picture: “for eight days we Jews sing happily” while the “little candles twinkle” and the children loudly sing “Of the miracles.”
While much of the music was light-hearted, some of the pieces were heartbreaking, speaking to the imbalance around the world where there is tremendous wealth inequity, disease and bloodshed. Noel Des Enfants was Claude Debussy’s final work, written in 1915 as a response to the first World War for all of the children of Europe left homeless. It gave them a voice as they cried out to Father Christmas for the wreckage with which they were left. The first half of the concert concluded with The Ballad Of The Harp-Weaver, a lovely, but wrenching selection, composed by Robert Dennis with words from Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem was about a impoverished mother who, on a frigid Christmas Eve, wove magnificent clothes for her son on a harp that magically transformed into a loom.
The beginning of the second half was energized by one of my favourite numbers, Huron Carol (or Twas In The Moon Of Wintertime) , a Canadian Christmas hymn and Canada’s oldest Christmas song, written around 1642 by Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit missionary living among the Hurons at Sainte-Marie. He wrote it in the native language of the Huron/Wendat people and the Huron name of the song is Jesous Ahatonhia (Jesus, he is born). The singers came up the aisle from the back of the church, the boom of the dumbek (a Middle Eastern drum) offering dramatic accompaniment to the vocals.
The whole room joined in, in Spanish, for the last song, Ocho Kandelikas (Eight Little Candles), made more fun by the ensemble tossing chocolate gelt coins into the audience. It’s an interpretation of a Sephardic (Ladino) tune written by Flory Jagoda, a Bosnian-born Jewish-American guitarist and singer-songwriter. I’m still humming “una kandelika, dos kandelikas….”
The following week, Mick Moloney, Athena Tergis, The Greenfields of America (Brendan Dolan, Liz Hanley, Billy McComiskey, Niall O’Leary and John Roberts), O’Leary’s dancing feet, and a bevy of guests did a five-night run (December 11-15), for a Winter Solstice Celebration. For the 13th anniversary concert, they were back at the Irish Arts Center (having gone on a “ramble” for a few years, as Moloney put it, to NJ, CT, the Kennedy Center and last year at Symphony Space), making for a more intimate, festive time this year.
Moloney began the concert with The Holly and the Ivy, and there was lovely a capella singing and O’Leary’s fancy footwork to set the mood. Joining them from the jazz community were Dan “Danny Boy” Levinson and Dennis Lichtman. Roberts, the “token Brit”, brought English songs (“the personification of Christmas”, as Moloney framed it) sang a beautiful rendition of I Am Christmas, with everyone coming in for the chorus. Hanley performed Christmas In The Trenches, which is based on the true story of troops during WWI who put down their weapons and celebrated the holiday during the first wartime Christmas. It’s a “very human story”, Hanley said and “it’s part of the Christmas cannon”, Moloney added.
Special guest Tamar Corn, backed by Levinson and Licthman, sang several Yiddish numbers. Then Moloney sat down with Ciarán Madden, Consul General of Ireland in New York, for a funny, insightful interview. Madden grew up in Co. Cork with uncles similar to the ones Moloney had had (Moloney described his uncles as being very quiet until “you poured whisky in them and then you couldn’t shut them up!”). Before taking up his post at Consul General in 20017, Madden spent four years as Ambassador of Ireland to the United Arab Emirates. In speaking about the holidays, Madden said the “smell of Chinese food in Ireland is the smell of Christmas for me. Very odd” Now that he’s residing in New York, he can continue the experience like his Jewish sisters and brothers here.
The evening concluded with On Christmas Day and The Wren Song. The latter is about a centuries-old tradition in the southern part of Ireland of hunting for wren, known as “The King of All Birds” on St. Stephen’s Day. But by the time Moloney was a boy in County Limerick, to ‘go out on the wren’ and sing for money at the front doors of neighbours’ houses had become, he joked, something of an “extortion racket”.
Now that winter is upon us and the holidays have arrived, do as the Irish and the Jewish people do: put on some tunes, sit down for Chinese eats and lots of wine and whisky!
Happy Chanukkah and Merry Christmas!!!
