Making its first international tour, the Dublin Institute of Technology's College of Music Concert Band will perform at Yale on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 8 p.m. in Woolsey Hall, corner of College and Grove streets. Members of the Yale Concert Band will join the Irish ensemble in its finale, "Haunting Hymns from U.S. to Erin," composed by Thomas C. Duffy, director of University Bands. This concert is free and open to the public.
"Haunting Hymns from U.S. to Erin" is a musical collage celebrating the special relationship between the United States and Ireland. Mr. Duffy brings together Irish and American folk melodies: "Boolavogue," "Shenandoah," "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again," traditional bagpipe music and "The Streams of Bunclody." Three groups of musicians will be spaced around the auditorium to suggest the physical distance between the New World and the Old. The work was commissioned by the Mount St. Charles Academy Woonsocket, RI, and premiered in April in Limerick, Bunclody, and Dublin, Ireland.
The program will include B. Whelan's overture to "Riverdance," the Irish musical that was a Broadway hit last spring, and "Finnegan's Wake" composed by A. Potter based on the novel by James Joyce.
The College of Music Concert Band was established in 1980 by its conductor, William Halpin, to serve as a municipal band for the city of Dublin. The 50 musicians range in age from 16 to 25 years old and are students of the conservatory.
Returning the visit, the Yale Concert Band will perform in Ireland in March of 1997. The tour will include a joint concert with the College of Music Band in National Concert Hall, Dublin.