Following its successful Valentine’s Day concert, The Mable Mercer Foundation offered a St. Patrick’s Day celebration from their studio/office on March 17.  The show remains available to stream. Please donate if you can: https://www.mabelmercer.org/watch-live/

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.” G.K. Chesterton

Pianist Bill Zeffiro plays The Irish National Anthem (by Patrick Heeney), after which Artistic Director KT Sullivan welcomes the audience with what she calls “A Mega Medley of Irish and Irish-American Songs.” The collection is bookended by “It’s a Great Day for The Irish” (Roger Edens). Material includes lyrical standards, drinking songs, and those meant for dancing. Sullivan’s robust soprano is deeply invested.

Next, performed with heart, comes J.L. Molloy’s “The Kerry Dance.” The vocalist calls it equivalent to Peggy Lee’s “Those Were the Days.” “Oh the days of the Kerry dancing/Oh the ring of the piper’s tune/Oh for one of those hours of gladness/Gone alas like our youth too soon…” “Dublin is the only city in the world that’s the birth place of four Nobel Prize winners for literature,”she tells us. “As Malachy McCourt says, They stuff this language down our throats and we spit it out in stars.”

Sullivan reads W.B. Yeats’ The Cloths of Heaven which contains the iconic quote: I’ve spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. She then sings the poem put to music composed by family matriarch and songwriter, Elizabeth Sullivan. Gravitas and grace of melody are like that of the verse.

“I’m Irish!…When I feel well I feel better than anyone, when I am in pain I yell at the top of my lungs, and when I am dead I shall be deader than anybody.” Morgan Llywelyn

Eric Yves Garcia, whose usual dapper attire today includes a green silk handkerchief and green socks, presents a rich medley of songs from Finian’s Rainbow “by those great sons of Ireland, Yip Harburg and Burton Lane.” Mood changes with a mere pause and breath from ballad to swing with a spoonful of romance, a dash of sentimentality and a pinch of humor. Sean Patrick Murtagh expressively sings the traditional “Danny Boy” (lyrics-Frederic Weatherly), hands clasped, eyebrows in a point. His resonant tenor and thoughtful phrasing takes us home, wherever that is.

Tim Connell gives us a glimpse of his own complete Irish show. Though he admittedly has yet to make a pilgrimage to the family seat, DNA is all green. Connell opens with Lynn Ahrens/Steve Flaherty’s “On the Streets of Dublin” (from A Man of No Importance). He immediately inhabits the strapping character of a native. Performance is palpably exalted. “I’ve grown up naively thinking the Irish were just a pint and potato culture. They are, but underneath is a people and culture who know how to spin a tale.” As he wryly talks about ancestors who had an act at the turn of the century, Connell claims his heritage. (James Followell- MD/piano).

Joined by violist Julie Kurzman, the artist delivers a George M. Cohan medley so infectiously animated, one pictures him playing the role. “Give My Regards to Broadway” is affectionate rather than brassy, “Harrigan” (spelled “Haitch A…) a mischievous jig, “My Home Town” bubbling, and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” irrepressible. “Finnegan’s Wake” (traditional) is toothsome fun, but never over the top. “Song for Ireland” paints a proud, affectionate portrait. An artist to be seen when the smoke clears.

“We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas–stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the `story’ part of the word `history,’ and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence.” Frank Delaney

Sullivan returns with “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen.” “Because my father named me Kathleen. What’s interesting about the song is that it’s written by Thomas P. Westendorf in tribute to his wife, whose name was Jenny.” An earnest rendition closes the show.

Expert Tech by Chidua Thomas
With thanks to Mabel Mercer Foundation Board Chairman Charles Bullock and his wife Susan for the splendid white piano, Russ Wooley for staying at the barricades, Rick Meadows and Jason Martin at The Foundation. And a call out to Alyce Finell recovering from a fall.