Part 2 : 1994 - 1996, Riverdance and Beyond
ANÚNA, 1993. Cover design Brendan Donlon
Invocation, 1994. Cover design Brendan Donlon
ANÚNA released their second CD entitled Invocation in August 1994. The album subsequently went on to win a National Entertainment Award for Classical music that December.
“I was contacted by a very well known US based label at that time, and they flew me to the States for a meeting. I brought the ten track recording of Invocation with me. We sat with all of the company listening to this strange and evocative record. There was silence at the end of it and a single voice said “I have no idea how I would even begin to go about selling that to anyone”. So to soften the blow somewhat I went back and added four new tracks to the album which featured more “accessible” pieces. Eventually we signed to Celtic Heartbeat/Atlantic Records for a three album deal.
"Songs of Praise" BBC TV 1994, live from Clonard, Belfast.
In May 1994 a seven minute interval segment was broadcast as part of the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin entitled Riverdance. ANÚNA featured at the opening of the work, performing a two minute segment entitled “Cloudsong”, soloist Katie McMahon, with music written by Bill Whelan.
Riverdance : Eurovision 1994
Anúna Performing in Riverdance in Dublin, 1995. Image Andrew McGlynn
“I remember that night very well mainly because, despite the hype-in-hindsight, no one actually had much of an inkling that Riverdance would eventually become a world-wide phenomenon. Bill had attended numerous ANÚNA performances and included us in his cantata The Spirit of Mayo in 1993. He was also very familiar with my own compositional voice. It was all just a happy accident, and one I will always be proud of having been a seminal part of”.
Eventually the single spent 18 weeks at number one in the Irish charts, went top 10 in the British charts and resulted in a hugely successful stage show and video. However the soundtrack album that was initially released did not feature ANÚNA.
“I couldn’t reach agreement with the record label, so we were excluded from the initial release of the album. Instead it was recorded with a group of session singers. At that stage I couldn’t see any reason for ANÚNA to continue with Riverdance : the Show and informed the producers that we would not be continuing with the production simply because the album being sold at the door of the venue and played on the radio did not feature the actual group who were on stage. Eventually an accommodation was reached between the record company and ourselves and happily the new disc included us on four tracks - “Riverdance”, “Shivna”, “The Heart’s Cry” and “Home and the Heartland”. It was our version was released in the USA and subsequently all over the world. It won a Grammy Award in 1996.”
ANÚNA 1995
Cover Shoot for the Róisín Dubh Single, 1995. Image Nigel Brand
Michael with Elvis Costello at Meltdown 1995
In January 1995 the group made their first of many appearances at the embryonic Celtic Connections at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, winning the award for "Most Popular Public Performance of the Year". The same year they recorded an interview with Michael and two songs for a television special for PBS in the USA as part of a show called "A Celtic Celebration". This was the first time ANÚNA came to the attention of the US public and the choral fraternity there sat up and took notice of the ensemble.
“Even a quarter of a century after their first encountering ANÚNA people still tell me what a huge influence the music has had on their lives. My own musical and personal life has been strongly defined by the music I listened to as a young man, so it is a strange thing when I am told that my own music, and the sound of ANÚNA, has had profound effects on people all over the world. This is probably the least expected, and most valued outcome of my work as a musician.”
Omnis, 1995.
In June they were invited by Elvis Costello to perform as his guests at Meltdown on London's South Bank. It was there that Michael met the singer Jeff Buckley, sharing a stage with him as a soloist, and his tragic death inspired the later album Behind the Closed Eye (1997) with the song “Where All Roses Go” dedicated to him. ANÚNA’s third album Omnis was released in October 1995.
“We had an ever increasing following in Ireland, building steadily for seven years, when Riverdance catapulted the group forward onto an international stage in an unprecedented manner with all the commercial trappings attached. We migrated from audiences of 3-400 to 4000 seater venues in just a few months. In the middle of all this I hung doggedly to my own music, creating Omnis to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. The singers in the group who remained with Riverdance were, understandably, drifting away from ANÚNA, so it ways the album was the swansong for that era of the group.
Dúlamán and Geantraí were originally one single song, but the necessity for another up-tempo number forced me to split it in half. Some of the material was way off the beaten track – O Viridissima Virga was a cascade of falling silvery voices and Tenebrae III sounded like it had fallen off the soundtrack of a video game (if they had existed in 1996…). For some reason the album worked very well. The 1995 release was very successful at home mainly on the back of massive over-exposure the previous year. Its mix of traditional Irish songs on the same disc as works by Hildegard of Bingen was oddly persuasive too.
By the time Omnis was hot off the presses it was a historical note, not a new album. I remember my mother saying to me after she first heard it that she couldn’t believe something so beautiful had been born out of so much turmoil. In retrospect I can’t either. The beauty of it is in the music rather than the performances I believe. I am still proud of the compositions on that record. “Dúlamán” has become a choral mega-hit all over the world thanks to the American ensemble Chanticleer who included it on their album Wondrous Love in 1997. The version of the album available today is an amalgamation of the 1995 release and the 1996 release, the latter recorded in the summer of 1996 in preparation for our departure from Riverdance. These are two completely different recordings, but I felt that I couldn’t justifiably continue to sell a record when most of the singers on it had left. I was young and stupid then.”
Anúna performed with the show in London, Belfast, Ireland and New York, but Michael decided not to seek to renew Anúna's contract, leaving in September 1996.
“At that stage Riverdance was very much becoming a single troupe, a single brand for want of a better description. I hadn’t set up ANÚNA to let it be absorbed into someones else’s creation and we parted with the producers amicably. But stepping off a moving train has consequences. Over the next year or so virtually all of the singers left ANÚNA to travel with the Show and I can’t blame them to be honest. A handful of them tried to remain as part of both for a short while, but life is not about going backwards. They eventually went their own ways and new singers joined us. So Anúna was reborn, as it would be many times over in subsequent decades, albeit tainted by a two edged celebrity status in Ireland, something I managed to shake off everywhere else except home.
Deep Dead Blue 1996. Cover design by Dynamo
In many ways ANÚNA itself is no different to Riverdance - a shifting collection of performers. ANÚNA has survived because of this, and Riverdance too although it is restricted in the material it can develop. No longer being part of the biggest show on the planet was a huge wrench for many of the singers. How do you go from being on stage in front of thousands of people back to the modest venues and smaller audiences that ANÚNA could offer?
For me personally it was very hard. I never had been interested in the glitzy part of the experience. Looking back I don’t really know why I remained with all of it as long as I did. I had been close friends with many of the group and those friendships had been important to me. All those relationships ended, and I suppose it made me very cautious when becoming personally involved with the singers for many years later, or at least until I was considerably more senior to the younger ones coming in to the ensemble. It was the first time I had to reboot the group, and it wouldn’t be the last. I discovered that the association with Riverdance had removed us from where we had been prior to 1994 in Ireland. And even today there is no definable place for the work of ANÚNA and myself on this island. Choral music has evolved into a reflection of the work of other nations, but hopefully that will not always be the case.
The influx of new singers in 1996 resulted in what is arguably one of our finest recordings Deep Dead Blue, but at the time it was pretty hard going for me. Deep Dead Blue was a conscious effort on my part to create a new definition, a new place for ANÚNA. It had become increasingly obvious that that would be outside of Ireland. Both records were licensed to Polygram, with the former achieving a top-five chart placing in the UK Classical Charts eventually in 1999. The original idea of the cover was to forcibly drag ANÚNA from the mainstream to the fringes of music where, I believed, it truly belonged. After a string of successful albums Deep Dead Blue pretty much sank without trace despite the eclectic nature of the music. I think at that point I came to accept what is a common thread in Irish artistic culture, that perceived success doesn’t necessarily bring good things to the table.”
Despite the lack of sales-success for the record it garnered some of the best reviews of ANÚNA’s career - Hot Press, Ireland’s version of Billboard wrote “…From the off the album emotionally engages the listener, solo voice or layered vocal, ancient Latin or English text, or modern lyric drawing one in to the very core of the music. That, I think, is what distinguishes Anúna's music from the rest - the tight connection to the heart and beyond. Mind you, it's not music to be flirted with; It demands a reciprocal commitment from the listener, which, if given, will not go unrewarded. This is beautiful, beautiful music and deserves the widest audience.”
Elvis Costello stated about the release “ Michael McGlynn is a remarkable composer and leader of the choral group Anúna. He has also been a good friend and a fine teacher in helping me overcome my reluctance to master musical notation. This allowed me to work more freely on The Juliet Letters and subsequent "written" compositions. Most of Michael's pieces draw on Irish early-Christian and pre-Christian texts as well as traditional airs and lyrical themes. These sources are recast in Michael's beautiful and startling music. It was therefore something of a departure for him to arrange "Deep Dead Blue" for the group. As Bill Frisell and I are yet to complete another composition, it is great to hear the transformation brought about by this choral rendition of our solitary song.” Michael views on the album are illuminating.
“Deep Dead Blue is full of oddities, but together the entirety of the record achieves a unity and a clarity. Besides the opening track, a personal favourite to sing, my favourite tracks on the record are “Island” and “Blackthorn”, both written simultaneously and both saying, in essence, the same thing. Our lives are immersed within a greater weave, and I think I have spent my whole life trying to interpret that connection in a way that I can understand and accept.”
Blackthorn from Deep Dead Blue
Island from Deep Dead Blue
ANÚNA began to perform more and more outside of the country including tours of Sweden, Spain and France in 1996. While the choir had collaborated with many traditional and classical Irish artists, in Madrid that year they performed with renowned Basque performer Benito Lertxundi. A further connection to Eurovision was made when ANÚNA soprano Eimear Quinn won the 1996 Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo. To end an eventful year ANÚNA performed on "Later with Jools Holland" at the BBC in December.
"Later with Jools Holland" was one of the programmes I watched pretty much every week so it was a surreal experience to work on the show with Suede and Alexander O Neill among other luminaries. There were so many odd things happening around that time and this was just one more. When we came into studio no one had a clue what to do with us, but I was used to that. But it was the BBC, so they were brilliant, as they always have been for the numerous appearances we have had on TV. We looked odd and there were loads of us, and we didn’t use the standard sound setup but it went grand. I’m glad we did this and so many other bits of eclectic TV. It was pretty magical.”
"Later With Jules Holland" 1996