The 10th anniversary of The Everyman's Sunday Songbook

The Everyman Sunday Songbook marks its 10th anniversary. Colette Sheridan reports.

CELEBRATING ten years, The Everyman Sunday Songbook will mark its anniversary with a special concert at the theatre on April 27. The loyal audience has been given the opportunity to select the songs that will be performed through making requests. There will be music from various genres with plenty of West End hits, opera, old time music hall, Gilbert & Sullivan, Percy French and Viennese music.

Soprano, Linda Kenny, devised the Sunday Songbook, working closely with former head of music at RTE Cathal McCabe. As well as Kenny and McCabe, the core group behind the Sunday Songbook comprises MC Michael Twomey and baritone, Damian Smith. (Former RTÉ deputy head of music and accomplished pianist Michael Casey won’t be involved).

The Sunday Songbook band will perform with guest musicians including Ian Sexton (piano), Jimmy Hynes (drums) and Deirdre Frost (bass guitar). Kenny, a classically trained soprano and sometime actor, has also been the producer of popular concerts in venues such as the National Concert Hall and University Concert Hall, Limerick.

“I love doing concerts,” says Kenny. “All the old music is based around passionate stories. They’re the kind of songs our audience grew up with. The audience for the Sunday Songbook is mostly in the 55 plus age group although all ages are welcome. As someone from the next generation, it’s a real honour to sing these songs. Over the years, we have celebrated the wonderful musical tradition that reigned 50 or 60 years ago in Cork. We’re still drawing our inspiration from that golden age and we are helping to introduce this essential social history to a new generation for which Fred Bridgeman on the Savoy organ, the Cork Operatic Society and the Coliseum Cinema have absolutely no resonance. We are looking after the musical needs of a generation raised in that tradition but whose appetite has been quelled because of the shortage of supply of musical events such as ours.”

Kenny, who is currently writing a children’s show for the theatre, was always interested in music and performance. “I actually played bagpipes when I was a kid as well as the tin whistle. I won loads of medals for Irish dancing. I fell into different things. When I was in primary school, my parents bought me a guitar. When I started to learn how to play it, it was an introduction to my passion for music. I wrote a lot of songs as a kid and won money from various competitions.”

Kenny went on to have her voice trained by Maeve Coughlan at the Cork School of Music and underwent further training at the Royal Academy of Music.

At UCC, Kenny gained a masters’ degree in English.

“I studied folk traditions. When you delve into Irish folk history, you see that Irish people were raised on a diet of socially interactive music such as the noble call. It’s a dying tradition. With the Sunday Songbook, my starting premise was to try and come up with theatre concerts that would have instantly recognisable music. In aiming at the 55 and over age group, I know that they like to plan ahead and book tickets for the concerts.”

Originally, Kenny pitched the idea of the Sunday Songbook to Geoff Gould when he was the artistic director of the Everyman. “Geoff was handing over the reins to Pat Talbot. Pat had the guts to go with the idea. He gave us free rein.” Ten years down the line, “people have a sense of ownership of the product,” says Kenny, who has clearly struck a chord with her audience.