This article is from page 40 of the 2009-09-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 40 JPG
THE Lismorahaun Singers will this week begin their new season and have invited anyone interested in becoming involved to come along to open and friendly rehearsals at the Town Hall Pavillion Theatre in Lis- doonvara.
Rehearsals will take place each Sunday in September from 6.30pm and anyone with any interest in tak- ing part is warmly invited to attend.
The Lismorahaun is Ireland’s most successful amateur choir but is also unique as it is Ireland’s foremost “teaching choir”.
This means that it welcomes new members of all ages who have little
or no singing experience.
“We are starting our new season on the first Sunday of September and that would be a good time for anyone who had been thinking of joining the choir to come down and have a look,” said choir founder, Archie Simpson.
‘Over the next six months or so we will be doing a programme of mu- sic which the choir has done before, revisiting the songs which the choir has done over the first 10 years of its existence. In the run up to Christ- mas, we will be doing a number of concerts for various charities; which should be great.”
The choir will also be going over to London next year to sing with the London Symphony Chorus at the
Barbican Centre.
‘The idea of a choir from the mid- dle of nowhere being invited to sing in the Barbican in unbelievable,” continued Archie.
“It’s another aspect of the choir. The last trip we had was over to Venice, which was great great fun. Things like that bring a great social aspect to it. We would really like to get some young people involved, es- pecially some more young boy.”
Indeed, one of Lismorahaun’s first members, Peter O’Donoghue, will next year sing in Carnegie Hall in New York at the invitation of Frank Patterson’s widow, Eily Patterson.
According to Peter, he would never even have started singing if it hadn’t
been for the Lismorahaun Singers.
“Everything that has happened to me is down to the choir. When I joined I had never sang before in my life – I had no idea whether I could sing or not,” said Peter, who was just ten when he joined the choir.
‘IT remember there is a funny vid- eo of me trying to sing when I was younger, and I hadn’t a note in my head. But thanks to the Lismorahaun I now have a music degree and am going places as a singer; it’s funny how things work out.”