Published on Jun 9, 2015

Rating:

Genre: NCPA

Dates: Friday, August 21, 2015

Venue: Concert Hall of NCPA

Prices: 80, 120, 180, 280

Features: Internationally acclaimed choral ensemble Anuna - the Ireland's National Choir will visit Beijing in 2015, bringing their unique choral voice to the Concert Hall of NCPA on Friday August 21st.

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Irish choral music has little history before the latter part of the twentieth century. In 1987 Dublin composer Michael McGlynn founded ANúNA. Much of the group's repertoire explores the relationship between traditional choral ideas in combination with the musical heritage of McGlynn's native land. The choir's name, originally An Uaithne, derives from the collective term for the three ancient types of Irish music, Suantraí (lullaby), Geantraí (happy song) and Goltraí(lament). They have, over the last quarter century, created a unique choral voice for Ireland, receiving wide accoladed for the originality of their performances, recordings and the natural quality of their vocal production. The choir is based in Dublin, Ireland.

Concerts feature a compelling combination of movement, elegant costume and candles with ethereal and haunting music sung in the choir's own unique way. Their material is written or arranged for the group by Michael McGlynn, and includes reconstructions of early and medieval Irish music. Anúna sing unaccompanied and without conductor, with between twelve and fourteen singers in any performance.

Their flexibility as an ensemble, combined with their application of specific choral techniques, has allowed them to slip easily between musical genres. While the choir have appeared twice at the Fes World Sacred Music Festival in Morocco, given the first ever Irish Prom at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall and appeared at the world-renowned Concertgebouw Hall in Amsterdam, they were also featured artists with Riverdance from 1994 to 1996, gaining a top-ten single in the U.K. Singles Charts and remaining at number one on the Irish Singles Chart for eighteen weeks.

They have been featured artists on three Grammy Award-winning albums with the Chieftains, Sting and Elvis Costello. Costello, when curating the Meltdown Festival at London's South Bank, invited Anúna to participate as part of the line-up. In 2009 and 2010 they collaborated with the RTé National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland for major concerts of McGlynn’s compositions in Dublin's National Concert Hall. Last year they appeared as the voices of Hell on the massively successful video game Diablo 3, gaining a Game Audio Network Guild nomination for the Best Original Choral performance in February 2013. Subsequently the soundtrack went on to win the award for overall'Audio of the Year'. Forthcoming engagements for the 2014 season include tours of China, Japan, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Anúna have released sixteen albums since 1991. Invocation won an Irish National Entertainment Award for Classical music, while Deep Dead Blue was nominated for a Classical Brit Award. Their albums have featured in various charts all over the world. Celtic Origins, also an award-winning PBS show and DVD, became the number one selling CD on the US World Music Charts in August 2007 (according to Nielsen Soundscan) while September 2011 saw their album Christmas Memories reaching number 95 in the Billboard 200 Album Chart. They have been signed to some of the world’s major record labels including Decca, Universal Classics, Polygram, E1 and Philips.

Tickets for Anuna - Irish Choral Ensemble Beijing Concert are Available now!