amplify #113 - Live from West Cork Chamber Music Festival

A live podcast discussion recorded at the 2024 West Cork Chamber Music Festival. Composers Rhona Clarke and Deirdre Gribbin join Jonathan Grimes to discuss their work on ‘Magdalene Songs’, an ongoing project by pianist Deirdre Brenner, which features their songs along with songs by Deirdre McKay, all based on testimonies from survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

This discussion took place following a performance the previous evening of the ‘Magdalene Songs’ by Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner.

From 1922 to 1996, more than 10,000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries. Operated by four religious orders in 10 locations around the country, these for-profit institutions detained individuals against their will and forced them to work long hours, unpaid, under abusive and humiliating conditions. These institutions committed some of the most serious systematic violations against human rights in Ireland in the 20th century.

Magdalene Songs is intended to honour those women who were so gravely mistreated by church and state in the Magdalene Laundries by giving voice to their experience.

Show Notes

• West Cork Chamber Music Festival
• Rhona Clarke
  • CMC Composer Page
• Justice for Magdalene Research
• Deirdre Gribbin
  • CMC Composer Page
• Deirdre McKay
• Deirdre Brenner
• Lotte Betts-Dean

Music

All music from Magdalene Songs, performed live at West Cork Chamber Music Festival on 5 July 2024 at St Brendan’s Hall, Bantry by Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano) and Deirdre Brenner (piano), and recorded by RTÉ lyric fm.

• Rhona Clarke - Martina
• Deirdre Gribbin - Bernadette
• Rhona Clarke - Evelyn
• Deirdre McKay - Litany to the Magdalene Dead

Recording and editing: Keith Fennell