Great response to Syria refugees aid concert

Gormanstown Choir at St Brigid's Cathedral.

With donations still incoming, the total raised at last week's Music for Medicine Concert in Kildare Cathedral is expected to exceed €5,000, writes Brian Byrne. The concert featured Gormanstown Choir and other local performers, and the proceeds will go towards buying hospital theatre time and prescriptions to help Syrian refugees in Jordan. 

Four volunteers from County Kildare will be travelling at the end of October with the latest mission under the banner of Atlantic Humanitarian Relief (AHR). The mission will provide medical, paediatric, surgical and dental care, together with humanitarian aid, focused on refugee camps in Northern Jordan where there are around 800,000 refugees from the civil war in their home country.

"The concert was an opportunity for all of us present to reflect positively on the medical and humanitarian needs of Syrian people, many of who have now been in refugee camps in Northern Jordan for over 7-10 years," says Old Kilcullen resident Dr Brendan O'Shea on behalf of the organisers. "It was also a lovely opportunity to enjoy a very well put together programme of easy listening, with music provided by Gormanstown Chapel Choir, the Dara String Quartet, the Consonance Clarinet Quartet and the incomparable Arthur Green playing Bach, and a wonderful arrangement of his own, to a traditional Irish air."

Dr O'Shea also thanked Dean Isobel Jackson and The Vestry at Kildare Cathedral for allowing the use of the building for the concert, and the Kilcullen Parish Office and Fr Gary Darby for their support in advance of the event. He also expressed the group's appreciation for many local businesses and individuals who contributed spot prizes for the raffle at intermission — "there was almost one for everyone in the rather large audience!"

Dean Isobel Jackson with Dr Brendan O'Shea.

Dorly O'Sullivan, Musical Director for the evening and Gormanstown Choir; Dr Brendan O'Shea, Chairman at Kildare Clinical Society; and Rachel O'Sullivan, MC for the evening and Lead Violin at The Dara Quartet.

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