conversation

A Conversation

With

Anthony Kearns

8.8.09

By Free-Lance Journalist

Melissa Lynch Hoffmann

Tenor Anthony Kearns is a familiar face to fans of Irish music. With The Irish Tenors, he has released eight CDs and four DVDs (which began as PBS broadcasts). He also has a busy solo career that takes him around the world – three time zones in one week, as a matter of fact.

He and his fellow Tenors just put the finishing touches on their new recording, a Christmas collection that will be released this fall. “It's going to be a fun album,” he said. “There's some lovely music on it... but I'm not giving away too many secrets.”

Despite his hectic schedule, he still managed to carve out 25 minutes to talk about his music, his career, and two upcoming benefit concerts in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

'That's what keeps you going'

“You never lose sight of where you come from,” Kearns, 38, said in a telephone interview from Ireland. “I got help along the way, and got a lot of advice, and what not. We're all in it together.”

He continued that he enjoys performing the benefit concerts. “Times are tough across the globe. At the end of the day, what is it – it's only a couple of hours,” he said. “Get out and do it, and put your shoulder to the wheel and make it happen. It can only do you good.”

Anthony Joseph Kearns hails from Kiltealy, a small village in County Wexford. One of six children, he was the last child to be born in the house once occupied by his ancestor Father Mogue Kearns, one of “the rebel priests” fighting against the English crown in the 1798 Rebellion. (The battle at Vinegar Hill was memorialized in the song “Boolavogue,” which has a special place in Kearns's repertoire. He also sings “The Croppy Boy,” another view of that uprising.)

While he admits he works more in the United States than in his native land, Dublin has been Anthony's home for almost 15 years. “That's what keeps you going, I suppose,” he said. “You do your bit and look forward to your few days getting back home.” And sometimes he feels “the odd pang” to head back to the foothills of Mount Leinster, to where he grew up.

“I'm suppose I'm lucky that I have my mother still at home – there's a home to go back to,” he continued. “But I find after about two nights I need to go [back to Dublin] again because it's too quiet!”

Travel: 'It's a killer'

Since he spends so much time on foreign shores, does the globe-trotting tenor ever fear that he is losing his Irishness? “No, I don't think so – not at all,” he said. “No, I haven't changed – I never did, and I lived in Wales for a number of years. I picked up no accent... but I suppose if you're there for a long period of time and you're working daily with people you might pick up accents or habits.”

Jetting from one country to another is not the ideal situation, Anthony said, “but one has to go where the work is.”

To illustrate his point, he ran down the previous week's schedule, which included a special guest appearance with Sir James Galway at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox, Massachusetts.

“I was in Prague recording an album with the Irish Tenors on Wednesday and Thursday [July 29 and 30],” he said. “I flew to the states on Friday. I traveled from New York to Tanglewood, did the thing in Tanglewood, home out of Boston, got into Dublin Monday morning at 6 and left on Tuesday morning at 6 to go to the U.K. to rehearse with my accompanist. Traveled back to Ireland on Thursday, did the concert last night Friday [August 7], sang at a 25th wedding anniversary today [August 8] and I've an opera concert tomorrow.”

“In between all that,” he added, “You're trying to eat and sleep.”

Anthony admitted that this sort of schedule can make him so exhausted that he has to push himself to get onstage. “You have to gear yourself up... and rise above it,” he said. “Normally it's not this crazy.”

All that travel can make him susceptible to illness. “You're in a capsule for six, seven, eight hours, and people are sneezing, and there's bubonic plague next to you...” he laughed. “It's a killer.”

He said he usually feels illness coming on two to three days before it hits. “The third day it really hits,” he said. “You feel that peppery sensation, if it's sinuses, and you know there's a head cold coming on.” He'll attempt to keep it at bay by flushing out the sinuses with a saline solution and stocking up on vitamin C.

'Only two types of music'

With The Irish Tenors, Anthony sings songs from the seemingly never-ending canon of Irish music. During his solo performances, the repertoire is of a wider variety: from French and Italian opera to Neapolitan songs, standards and showtunes – with a healthy dose of Irish tunes mixed in, of course.

“There's only two types of music – good and bad,” he said with a chuckle. “If it happens to be a French aria, lovely; if it happens to be an Irish song, great.

“To be honest,” he continued, “I think some of the classical music is written better from a vocal point of view – they flow much better. In some of the Irish songs, in particular the fast ones – the comic stuff – there are leaps and jumps and all sorts of things going on. Really, they were not written for high voices. They were written for the average person, for the ordinary person, be it in a pub or at home.”

The classical repertoire is set. Arias were written in a certain key, and that's it. “If you can sing them, you can sing them,” he said. “If you can't, you can't.”

He began finding out what he can sing in 1993, when he entered “Ireland's Search for a Tenor,” a competition sponsored by a radio station – and won it. This brought him to the attention of legendary Irish voice teacher Veronica Dunne, and they immediately began working together.

Whatever music he sings, the preparations are the same. “You have to get the music correct,” he said. “Technically and vocally, you have to get your voice in a place to sing it with some sort of ease that you're not strangling yourself. At the end of the day it's a muscle, you know.”

To keep the voice in shape, Anthony regularly consults with singing teachers. “It keeps you on track, that you're not picking up bad habits.,” he said. “I'd be fairly aware of it myself anyway – I have a good ear and I'll think no, that's not going to do, that's not acceptable... let's go back to the drawing board and start again.”

Location, location, location

As a touring artist, Anthony has had the opportunity to perform in a variety of venues, from arenas to outdoor sheds to theaters and concert halls, as a solo artist or with The Irish Tenors. “Theatres are probably my favorite, with a nice concert stage – or a concert hall,” he said. “One of the finest places I have performed in, as a solo and with the Tenors, is Worcester, Massachusetts at Mechanics Hall. It's a smashing hall, a lovely concert hall.”

Also, churches, which he has sung in his entire life, are always special. “There's a nice community feel about them,” he explained.

One of the places Kearns has been fortunate to sing is Boston's Fenway Park. “I had a fantastic time there,” he said. “They looked after me very well. They brought me around the whole place; I even got to try on a World Series ring. My only wish was that I could get one! But... some other time.”

Whatever the venue, acoustics are always on a singer's mind. “Most of the sheds are acoustically friendly, with a nice resonant canopy overhead,” he said. “But some of the theatres can be swallowed up with the heavy curtains – some of them were not built with acoustics in mind. Some of the churches are perfect, others are a bit wish-washy with the sound, and are very reverberant. Your ear adjusts to it, I suppose,” he said.

He'll be able to adjust to a host of new venues as he tours this fall, a tour that will take him to some of the loveliest places in eastern Canada: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick; and from one side of the United States to another. And in those concerts, he will present music that crosses the music spectrum, from La Donna e Mobile to Danny Boy.

“You never get sick of Danny Boy because people are so affected by it,” he said, noting that it's featured in nearly every concert he sings. “You can't not be affected by it yourself. Every time you approach it, it's different; it touches a lot of people.”

“I'll sing whatever I like,” he said, “if I happen to be able to do it justice.”