Vernon Chorale Renewing Bond With Irish Music Trio

Submitted by Stephanie Summers

TOLLAND, CT — It's a rare thing when an idea hatched in a lively pub over vacation still has its appeal come the unforgiving light of the next morning. And yet, it does happen.

Several years ago, Vernon Chorale Artistic Director Ehren Brown was camping with his wife
near Bar Harbor, Maine, when they came upon the engaging Irish music of The Jordan TW Trio
from Manchester, NH.

"We go back and we go back again,” Brown says about the lure of the traditional Irish group, led
by fiddler Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki and booked for the month of August at an area Bar Harbor
pub. Brown told his wife, Carla, he had to bring together this Irish group and The Vernon
Chorale, a 40-member central and eastern Connecticut community group that performs sacred
and secular choral music dating from the Renaissance through contemporary times.

Then he followed up, met Tirrell-Wysocki and the others and made it all happen six years ago at
a church in Vernon. “It's not uncommon that someone from the audience will come up with an
idea for a collaboration that they're excited for in the moment,” the trio leader says, “But it is rare that they will follow up when they get home. So I was thrilled when Ehren did that.”

Now that collaboration is being renewed at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, at the United
Congregational Church on the Green in Tolland, Connecticut. The concert will feature music that
goes from the ephemeral “Star of the County Down,” with indistinctive text but plenty of choral
texture, to the rousing tale of woe “On the Rocky Road to Dublin” and pub singalong favorite
“Wild Rover.”

Tirrell-Wysocki, who calls himself “very much a fiddler, not a violinist,” says his two partners of
13 years, guitarist Matt Jensen and bassist Chris Noyes, “can read each other's minds and
it's really impressive.” Versed in music theory and having played together since high school,
Jensen and Noyes are invaluable collaborators, especially with harmonies, he says. “That's when I'm most grateful to have them in my band.”

Brown wanted to repeat the collaboration the next year, saying, “It was too good of a
partnership, they were too good, too nice and it was...like lightning in a bottle.” But a pandemic
rudely interrupted. “Artistically, I had been pulling my punches,” Brown says, “Because there's
only so much you can do with a choir that's masked,” without the normal nuance, blend,
subtleties. After a period of rebuilding, the choir is back to “Oh this is what it's all about,” says Brown, who has directed the group for two decades, has conducted the Hartford Symphony
Chorale and sings in the Hartford-based group Voce.

Vernon Chorale Conducting Fellow David Gladstein, a UConn master of music candidate, will
direct a few pieces, and Collaborative Pianist Kathleen Bartkowski will perform. Past Assistant
Conductor Christopher Wasko has arranged a tight, fast-paced ballad, “The Rising of the Moon,”
which Brown calls “an intricate march.” Other selections include "Loch Lomond,” “An Oiche” in Gaelic, “Danny Boy,” and the trio's version of “Black Velvet Band” with added harmonies Brown wrote.

It's a piece that involves the audience and “breaks that fourth wall,” Tirrell-Wysocki says, adding
that the late Irish singer Tom Lanigan of Dublin told him, “There are only two songs in Irish
music where the woman is always at fault, never the man.” One is “Black Velvet Band,” the
other, “Whiskey in the Jar.”

The fiddler cites this piece as an example of traditional Celtic music that may be mournful but
never too dark. “You're taking it in good humor, not as sad as it actually would be.”

Tirrell-Wysocki has been dubbed “Best Fiddler” by New Hampshire Magazine and “Master
Artist” by the NH State Council On the Arts. He's composed music for public radio and Ted
Talks, and his trio's recordings are known by Celtic enthusiasts in New England and the British Isles alike.

The facile fiddler says his celebrated high-speed playing is “a combination of focus but not
thinking about it. That's what works for me.”

What lures a New Hampshire man with Irish blood to this music of the people is its history. “A
lot of Irish culture was essentially stomped out. The British didn't go after Irish music, they
thought it was beneath them. It's about the Irish people and their identity. It's for the masses. It';s not meant to be perfect.”

He's looking forward to performing again with The Vernon Chorale voices added in. “The three
of us in the trio all sing but there's at most three of us going at the same time,” Tirrell-Wysocki says. “Part of what's exciting is that we're getting to work with a whole bunch of people who have made it their goal to become really really talented singers that bring beauty and power to the music that we wouldn't be able to supply on our own.”

Tirrell-Wysocki adds, “We make our living performing Celtic music year round and it's
especially nice for us to see audiences and other musicians interested in this music when it's not St. Patrick's Day."

Click here for ticket information.