pianist Deirdre Brenner introduces The Magdalene Songs which she brings to the Oxford Worldwide Tune Competition

Deirdre Brenner (Picture: Andrej Grilc)

From 1922 to 1996 greater than 10,000 ladies and women have been incarcerated in Eire’s Magdalene Laundries. Operated by 4 non secular orders, these for-profit punitive establishments detained people towards their will, committing critical systematic violations towards human rights. 

The Magdalene Songs is an ongoing challenge initiated by pianist Deirdre Brenner that seeks to honour the ladies by giving voice to their expertise bringing collectively outstanding feminine Irish composers and the phrases of particular person survivors into a set of songs. The Magdalene Songs shall be given by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner on 23 October on the Holywell Music Room as a part of the Oxford Worldwide Tune Competition.

I lately caught up with Deirdre by Zoom (her in Vienna, me in London) to seek out out extra in regards to the challenge. Born in Massachusetts, Deirdre earned a Bachelor’s diploma from Dartmouth Faculty with a double main in Engineering Sciences and Music, and Grasp’s levels from each the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Konservatorium Wien.

Tune is a medium that she has labored in most. With its mixture of textual content and music, there’s loads of alternative and energy in tune performances but the texts don’t at all times resonate with fashionable audiences, although there’s nice potential for amplifying tales by tune.

Former Magdalene Laundry in Galway, Eire

Deirdre’s interplay with the tales from the Magdalene Laundries partly took place because of her private historical past, her mom is Irish, her father is American, and Deirdre works so much in Eire. She has recognized the story for a very long time and it resonates along with her. However the occasions of 2020 prompted her to re-engage with the topic, offering her with loads of considering time. She was in search of a approach to interact with the topic by music. Through the use of the texts of the ladies themselves, fairly then poems, was a strong approach to confront a topic that’s a part of historical past.

As with every nice story, there was simply the potential to inform a slice of it and Deirdre knew that the scope must be restricted. Throughout COVID she spent loads of time studying, particularly the outcomes of the oral historical past challenge created by the advocacy group, Justice for Magdalenes Analysis which put the ladies’s phrases into the general public area. Deidre realised that this was the way in which into the topic. To inform the story, you do not want the whole lot. The Magdalene Songs makes use of phrases of particular person survivors extracted from the Justice for Magdalenes Analysis interviews, with every tune named after the lady whose testimony it presents.

As this was a shared collective historical past, Deirdre needed to collaborate with composers who felt empathy with the ladies. She spent loads of time listening and approached composers who she felt would resonate with the topic. Preliminary funding meant she may fee the primary wave of songs, and since then extra composers have come on board. The result’s a set of songs that Deirdre is eager to share broadly.

She doesn’t really feel that it’s a cycle within the standard classical or romantic sense, there is no such thing as a starting or finish, as an alternative every tune is a vignette of 1 girl’s story. And he or she hopes that different performers may take into account together with a few of the songs of their programmes.

The challenge continues to be evolving, there are at present eight songs with 4 extra coming this Summer season and a proposal for just a few extra subsequent yr. Her aim is to create and hour’s price of music, and by the efficiency in Oxford she feels it should have reached some 40 minutes length. However she emphasises that it is rather a lot a long-term challenge.

The texts are impactful, and he or she feels that this efficiency size is enough for an individual to soak up in a single sitting. A number of the songs are highly effective certainly and Deirdre mentions Deirdre McKay‘s Litany to the Magdalene Useless particularly which honours the over 2,000 ladies who died (from malnutrition in addition to different illnesses) whereas nonetheless imprisoned within the laundries.

Cemetery on the former Magdalene Laundry in Donnybrook, Eire

Modern music has turn into very a lot an curiosity to Deirdre, and her curiosity has grown over time. She feels that once we are youthful, we begin with the recognized and be taught the fashion, and modern music can regularly turn into extra essential. It displays the way in which we confront the collective thought. There’s loads of energy in modern tune, reflecting on the fashionable world.

Her favorite live performance programme could be one which has one half new songs and one half recognized songs. She sees this as a approach to interact audiences, they arrive as a result of they know one thing and so they go away having realized one thing. It’s an thrilling and profitable system.

She has lately relocated to the USA, to Madison, Wisconsin the place she teaches Collaborative Piano on the College of Wisconsin. There, she was lately concerned in a pageant highlighting ladies within the arts with a deal with ladies composers.

After we spoke, she was trying ahead to the Boyne Music Competition which takes place from 24 to 27 July 2025. The pageant presents a mixture of chamber music, tune, classical music and modern, and was established in 2013 by Deirdre and her cousins Aisling and Julie-Anne Manning. The pageant relies on the 18th century mansion, Townley Corridor close to Drogheda which is north of Dublin. And there are additionally occasions in different venues equivalent to Slane Fortress, plus occasions reaching out into the group together with one at a whiskey distillery. The primary efficiency of The Magdalene Songs was on the 2022 Boyne Music Competition.

Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner carry out The Magdalene Songs on the Oxford Worldwide Tune Competition on 23 October 2025, together with songs by Rhona Clarke, Deirdre McKay, Elaine Agnew and Elaine Brennan.

This a part of an Eire-themed day on the pageant on 23 October which incorporates:

• tenor Hugo Brady and pianist Mark Rogers in songs primarily based on the poetry of Thomas Moore
• a dialogue between Maeve O’Rourke (who has labored for Justice for Magdalenes Analysis since 2010) and Deirdre Brenner
• Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner in The Magdalene Songs
• soprano Soraya Mafi and pianist Ian Tindale in a programme reflecting each her Iranian and Irish roots
• ending with Irish people music from the duo of Zoe Conway (fiddle/vocals) and John McIntyre (guitar).

Additional details from the Oxford Worldwide Tune Competition’s web site.