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An Irish Celebration Weekend: Local performers celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in two-concert event

Melrose resident and Irish tenor Brendan Carroll said the nicest honor he’s received this year was being asked to sing for the great-granddaughter of Teddy Roosevelt at her wedding rehearsal dinner at the Harvard Club in Boston.

“I said that night, ‘Gee, I think this is the first time the Harvard Club would see an Irish guy in here singing Irish ballads in front of pictures of senators, governors and presidents,” Carroll said. “I got a great reception … everybody has a little bit of Irish in them.”

In the spirit of everybody having a little bit of Irish in them — especially on St. Patrick’s Day —Carroll is hosting “An Irish Celebration Weekend,” two Irish music concerts this Friday and Saturday night featuring Irish — and local — performers alike.

“My whole idea of this is to kind of get Melrose people aware that we can continue the culture of Irish music in Melrose,” he said. “[And] remind them that Irish culture is still alive and well in Melrose on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Hopefully it will be a concert that supports one another … we’ve invited other groups to advertise their upcoming shows at this one. If we all help one another it will be a nice little community.”

Irish music concerts at Memorial Hall on St. Patrick’s Day weekend have been a tradition for a decade, with the legendary Tommy Makem, who died in August 2007, coming to Melrose for nine years straight.

Carroll performed at the Makem memorial concert last month with Makem’s sons and others and hopes to carry that legacy forward with the concerts this weekend.

“I’m going to close out the first half of each night with ‘Four Green Fields’ as a tribute to Tommy Makem,” he said.

Joining Carroll for Friday night’s performance will be local men’s a cappella group Blue of a Kind, although Carroll said for one night the group should be known as “Green of a Kind.”

Bob Eggers, Blue of a Kind’s music director, said the group is “really honored” to take part in the celebration, adding that it would be the group’s first foray into Irish music.

“We’ve been working on holiday programs for Christmas and Hanukah over the years,” Eggers said. “This is a great opportunity to develop some Irish music. We’re very excited about Brendan’s interest in making this an annual festival and continuing the tradition of having something centralized in Melrose as part of St. Patrick’s Day, and we’re hoping to be part of that over the years.”

Eggers, told that Carroll referred to them as “Green of Kind,” said with a laugh, “We’re still Blue of a Kind — just green for a night, like half the audience. They’re Irish for the night too.”

songs from conventional, folk, and classical worlds

Carroll said most people are aware of traditional Irish songs, but not necessarily as aware of classical Irish compositions, and that the concerts will feature a mixture of both.

“Saturday night we’re going to have John Montanus playing Nocturne No.8 by John Fields,” he said. “John Fields wrote nocturnes before anyone else, but never got credited because he was an Irish guy. A lot of the Irish tenors have done a great job on it. That’s kind of the passion of being a good singer, is to take it through each level, from the traditional, to the folk, to the contemporary and the classical.”

Also on Saturday night, the Polymnia Choir will perform “Letters from Ireland,” a 35-minute piece featuring letters taken from the Irish national archives read out loud during the performance. Peter Duffy will read the letters, joined by Polymnia, and his wife, harpist Alice Foy Duffy.

More contemporary-sounding tunes will also be featured, such as “Lark in the Morning.” Eggers said people are familiar with the song from its popularity in the 1970s and he has created an original arrangement of the song for Blue of a Kind.

“This will be the premier performance of it in public and it’s our lead-off piece,” he said. “It’s shaped up very well. I took something that was a rock band kind of invention and turned it into an a cappella piece.”

Melrose resident Jean Dancewicz — “Jean O’Dancew …

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