Choral society to remember ‘Absent Voices’

A Dunshaughlin community choir who collaborated on a powerful song in honour of one of their much loved members who sadly lost their life to Covid-19 say they will hold a concert post lockdown for the village to heal.

Róisín Freeney and the 45 members of Dunshaughlin Choral Society were awarded a grant by the Irish Hospice Foundation to support creativity in the community and went on to record an original collaborative piece to reflect the loss of members and loved ones in their village.

'Absent Voices' is a poignant piece of music that pays tribute to lost loved ones in the community including choir member Joe Fitzpatrick who passed at the end of January from the virus.

Roisin Freeney, who composed the song along with Suzanne Keegan, explains how the project came together: ”It is an original piece compiled in collaboration with the choir. I was quite inspired by the military wives formed by Gareth Malone a few years ago where they took a selection of letters written to and from Afghanistan and took sections of it out and composed a song.

“We compiled this original song and got the whole choir to learn it and we got our accompanist Ciara Vaughan to put it into four parts because we are a four-part choir.

“Everybody over zoom learned their parts with our choir director Claire Dixon and we recorded it on to a phone and sent them to video engineer Shane Barriscale, who put it all together into a video.

“I got the choir to send me emails with reflections of Covid - we lost one of our bassists to covid a few months back and I said if anyone wants to write any reflections on that send them into me.

“Joe was a lovely singer and an energetic and enthusiastic member. He is missed, especially by his fellow bass singers and there are direct mentions of his 'empty chair' in our song. I was sent these wonderful emails they were very sincere reflections on bereavement during covid and I came up with a melody line from there.”

Roisin knows only too well what it is like to grieve during a pandemic having lost her mother Theresa during the process.

“My own poor mother got seriously ill during this time and passed away. I was lucky that I got to get in to see her before she passed and sat and sang to her, it’s amazing the role music makes in these moments.

“In bereavement singing can trigger all kinds of things, sadness and reflections and memories of the person and to have that taken from us during covid is really difficult. People were genuinely struggling and not being able to come together and heal through singing and that is what we were trying to capture in the song.

“When all of this is over we are going to have to do a concert for everyone in the village to heal because we have all been through so much.”

Not being able to meet up and sing together has been a challenge for the choir that plays a vital role in village life, according to the Dunshaughlin woman.

“The piece is called Absent Voices because covid has pushed us online rather than rehearsing in St Patrick’s Hall as we would normally do very Monday.

There is a strong tradition of choir singers in Dunshaughlin as Roisin explains: ”The choral society was originally a musical society, it was set up about 45 years ago, it is very much an amateur choir you don’t have to audition you can just come along and sing.

“Because we are going nearly 50 years nearly everyone in the village is connected to it somehow, their mother or brother or sister was in it at some point so I think we were well placed to express how the community felt on the frustration of not being able to grieve in the way we normally would.

“We were really privileged to have been awarded the grant and to work with the Irish Hospice Foundation. They have a bereavement helpline at the moment, when you are in isolation and grieving it’s very hard so reaching out is important.”

Visit Dunshaughlin Choral Society on Facebook for more details.