Pleasant musical evening with sobering context

The Gormanstown Choir Concert last evening in Gormanstown Church was a very pleasant and engaging musical experience, writes Brian Byrne. But it was also a sobering reminder of the plight of some 800,000 Syrians in Jordan who are refugees from the civil war that engulfed their neighbouring homeland.

The event was what has become a now annual presentation to raise funds for the twice a year missions to the Jordan refugee camps by volunteer healthcare professionals and humanitarian helpers with Atlantic Humanitarian Relief, to bring basic medical care to those in the camps. In recent years those missions have included volunteers from the Kilcullen area.

Details of the missions were provided by Professor Dr Brendan O'Shea, and a short recollection of life in Aleppo in Syria before and after the war was given by Muhammad Achour.

The music programme included pieces from Mozart, Bach, Lotti, and Lead Belly by the choir, led by Dorly O'Sullivan, as well as clarinet performances by the Consonance Quartet, and Arthur Greene on the keyboard.

Thanks were expressed on behalf of the organisers to all who support locally the AHR missions.

A full report will be posted at a later date, as well as some musical examples from the evening.

Some photos are posted here, all the Diary's pictures from the evening can be seen at this link.

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