The Irish Tenors bring meaningful music and hearty laughs to Kansas City

You can learn more about the Irish Tenors at theirishtenorsmusic.com. Tickets and more information for their Kansas City Performance can be found at kauffmancenter.org.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

Christy L’Esperance: Well, I have to start with this because I saw that when Conan O'Brien visited Dublin, he got to sing Danny Boy in a pub with you. And so my question is, of the four of you, including Conan O'Brien, who claims to be the most Irish?

Anthony Kearns: Conan all day long, all day long. He's done the tests. He's had the test done and he’s as Irish as Patty’s pig.

Declan Kelly: He looks the most Irish, too.

Christy: He does.

Ronan Tynan: He's very fair skinned and his hair might be a little touched up, but it's very kind of gingery.

Christy: Around this time of year, it becomes a competition in Kansas City to claim the most Irish heritage because we have a very strong Irish history and community here. Around the turn of the 20th century, we had one of the largest Irish immigrant communities in the United States, so you can see that culture. It's still very strong here with our huge St Patrick's Day parades and the many Irish businesses in town. What will the Irish Tenors offer Kansas Citians who want to get in touch with our Irish roots?

Ronan: Look - fundamentally, when people emigrate to America, the biggest thing they bring is their culture. And when you're in America and you're of Irish descent, you like to maintain the traditions that have always been part of your family. I think all the people who are from Ireland and living in America, like, for instance, in Kansas City, certainly on St. Patrick's Day, it becomes nostalgic and they want to celebrate that because it's their day. And we're very demonstrative in the way we celebrate.

So when you were growing up or when you first started singing, who was your inspiration, be it an opera singer or a traditional Irish singer?

Anthony: I think we're all the same in that regards. I think they’ll probably agree. We were inspired by singers in Ireland, growing up. There was a tenor who was famous here back a million years ago, it seems now. John McCormack. And around 1910, 1920’s he spent a lot of time in the US and was a huge star long before the U2’s of this world appeared. He was selling out Carnegie Hall twice a week and selling millions of albums. And more interestingly enough, selling sheet music, which was a great thing. A song come out and John McCormack's face was on it and it sold a million copies. He was a superstar back in the day, so he kind of paved the way for the tenor. But there've been so many down through the years. And international singers, not just Irish.

Declan: I would have grown up listening to LPs of Irish singers. One of my first memories was watching the great Caruso with Mario Lanza as I was seven or eight years old, and just deciding that I'd love to do something like that, even though I went and became a teacher first. My mother had a cousin who was a tenor, so music was always in the background. But Irish people, we've always had music in the background. People would gather, they'd pick up the fiddle, play it, sing songs. So that's been there for hundreds and hundreds of years. So whether you've emigrated or are still in Ireland, you have that music in your inner ear. It's always there.

Ronan: Well long before TV or anything like that came into place, particularly in Ireland where we’re storytellers - sit down, sing songs. Before kind of we were aware of a lot of, you know, famous tenors or whatever. Shaughnessy did a lot of that. But I mean, you know, every tenor - Declan mentioned Mario Lanza, I was a big fan of Jussi Björling - we all have our choices. I think it's a matter of what the timbre of the voice is. And once you hear that, you kind of like to feel that you'd like that sound. You know what I mean? I suppose that's the big thing. But as Anthony said, McCormack was the greatest Irish export that Ireland had in terms of singing.

Christy: You have these inspirations of Mario Lanza and Jussi Björling and Luciano Pavarotti. You're all by definition the vocal range of the tenor. But what's the difference? Is there a difference between an Irish tenor and maybe a Germanic Wagnerian tenor or an Italian tenor? Is there a difference in the sound?

Anthony: We’re known for our Lyric Tenors in Ireland. We haven't produced too many dramatic ones down through the years. We tend to have a lyrical quality in all singers: sopranos, tenors, mezzos, they're all of that nature. So you’re growing up with great songs: the ballads - there's no end to them, the great classical Irish songs, maybe you're singing in the native - well, in the English language, I should say, not the native language. We do sing in the native tongue occasionally song as well. So if you're singing in English all the time, maybe it's a different style. It's a different color of sound compared to the German who's singing in German the whole time or the Italian sound.

Ronan: And it's not that we're not without drama. We bring the drama. We bring plenty of drama. As Anthony said, you listen to people and I suppose the Italians would look at their voice and their language as the language of the singer because of the vowels. You know, all of us were brought up and trained very much on that style, you know, that Italian bel canto style. And as Anthony said, there's not a lot of Helden and dramatic tenors other than the ones that are driving themselves to blue blazes to get to those notes as loud as they can. We're more sophisticated. We kind of stay within ourselves rather than jump out and try and scream the heads off people.

The great thing about the three of us is that each of us are very distinguishable in our sound. And we've all done opera at the various levels. And, you make a conscious decision then at some stage that the performances of the group, certainly Anthony and I have found this, that The Irish Tenors brings something very special to a performance because we share our emotions, our feelings, and our music. And we share it also in our own language, which I think is a great thing.

When Declan joined us, that added a smashing dimension to us because it brought a unique element. And plus he's very lively on stage.

Declan: Well, you know, we've all brought our life experience to do it. And because I've sort of just joined a group five, six years ago, you have your own personality and yet it blends. Right now with the three of us with different personalities, different voice styles, and yet it's still a wonderful homogenous group. And I think your audience appreciates that. It's not one tenor, it's three. So it's three voices. It's harmony, it's spirit. And we bounce off each other. Every performance is different for us as well.

Ronan: As long as we can remember the harmonies.

Anthony: Yeah, and going back to that tenor and Ireland, we have to clarify, we are three tenors and we happen to be from Ireland, you know? There's this thing today when people hear of an Irish tenor to have this picture in their mind of a guy singing Too-ra-loo-ra in the pub. That’s the made up Irish tenor. The real guys can sing the opera, can sing the German lied, can sing the french song.

Ronan: Put in the time. And we've all done competitions. You know, it's hard work!

Anthony: Well there was a time at one stage in the 60’s and 70’s where tenors were popping up on different shows and there were Irish tenors from whatever, they had an Irish name they were singing. What they were doing was they were copying what they were hearing on the recordings of John McCormack with the crackling and the frying in the background. And they heard this weaker sounding voice. And that's what they copied. That’s the mistake they made. They weren’t getting the true sense of the sound because they weren't in the room at the time.

Anthony: Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people did that in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. But then it kind of stopped and the real Irish tenor popped up again.

Christy: You talk about the tradition of storytelling in Ireland and that, you know, goes hand-in-hand with operatic singing. Of course, that's storytelling as well. What can Kansas City audiences expect at the concert that you'll bring to us? Will there be some element of storytelling within the music?

Anthony: There is, of course. This is a roller coaster of emotion. This show has so many facets to it. There’s upbeat music, there's toe tapping music, there’s heart-wrenching songs and pieces. And that's the reality. That’s people. We wear our colors on our sleeve. And that’s it. We open up the chest, there it is and we let it out.

Ronan: That's the one thing of both the voice. I mean, when you sing on stage, we're naked.

Anthony: Are you?

Declan: (Laughing) Just to clarify, he means emotionally.

Christy: (Laughing) That gives me a whole other set of questions.

Anthony: (Laughing) You don't want to see that.

Ronan: Vocally. Vocally. We're vocally exposed. You can't hide. You can't hide. You're in a position where you're an integral part of a group. And each one of us thinks we’re soloists. We’re three soloists within the show. So you get a sample of everything. But I mean, it's a team event. It really is a team event.

Anthony: Lots of harmony, lots of great arrangements. The arrangements have a lot, you see. You have the lyrics, you have the orchestra. You have an arranger like Dave Cullen, who arranged Phantom of the Opera, who knows the instrumentation of an orchestra and can add the color and the birds and all the sound effects. And when you put that with the orchestra and the voices on top of that and they're in harmony, it's powerful stuff.

Ronan: We're the only group for the last 25 years who consistently sing with orchestra, and in the present day, that's, you know, that's quite an incredible thing. It's golden. And, you know, we've stuck to our principles that the Irish Tenors will not perform other than with orchestra.

And as you can imagine in these times, it costs to have an orchestra, but we've never let the brand down. And I think people, when they come to our shows, they're delighted because they get a fantastic experience. And also there's orchestral pieces where we bring our composers to the stage in the sense that, you know, we bring these people’s music to the audience and it's very powerful.

And so we have a very broad spectrum of a show. It's not just singing. It's not just someone coming out on the stage. Our personalities are on display. Our voices are on display.

Declan: And our dancing is on display.

Anthony: (Laughing) Oh my God!

Ronan: Their dancing. But our camaraderie is on display. And, you know, we're human. Everybody makes a mistake in our time.

Declan: Live theater.

Ronan: It is live theater.

Christy: That's the excitement of it. Well, thank you so much. Ronan and Declan and Anthony, Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you visiting with us at Classical KC. This is so much fun.

Irish Tenors: Thank you so much. Thank you. Privilege.