History

A short history of ENCHIRIADIS TREIS and highlights of the story so far.

In 1987 Marion Hayden-Doherty, who was head of music at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, decided to form a choir for her own teenaged children who were all musically talented and their friends. This little choir practised in Marion’s kitchen and totalled about 12-15 singers learning fairly simple madrigals and folk songs from the renaissance period to Negro spirituals. Marion’s neighbour, Mary Farrell acted as manager for the choir and arranged their first “overseas” trip to the Isle of Man. When they had reached a certain proficiency, Marion invited me, as a neighbour, to attend a Sunday evening rehearsal as their “audience”.

I was completely won over and very impressed with the excellence of the singing and ability to harmonise. Our local Lions Club in Malahide also happened to be hosting the annual convention of Lions Clubs in The Grand Hotel in Malahide that year. I suggested to the Lions and to Marion that her group could provide entertainment as, in addition to singing, many of the group were talented instrumentalists. Following some reservations and discussions that was finally agreed. On the Friday evening I had some trepidations as to whether the offering would be enjoyed by the delegates who had arrived from all over Ireland, UK and further afield. In the event the evening was an amazing success and was much more enjoyed than the professional band which played the following evening. The Lions received many compliments and letters of appreciations. Subsequently Marion invited my son Paul to join the choir and, as he required help, as a wheelchair user, I tagged along to help him and following the retirement of Mary Farrell who first managed the choir, now named ENCHIRIADIS, I was roped in to take over from her. I had many enjoyable years arranging concerts, overseas tours to Germany, Spain, Italy and to many choral festivals at home and abroad where the choir met with outstanding success including winning the International Choral Festival in Cork.

Such was the success of ENCHIRIADIS that Marion formed a second choir for 12-16 year olds to feed talent into the main choir and it, naturally, was named ENCHIRIADIS JUNIOR and also toured and sang with success. Because of the young age of these children many parents travelled with them on tour and became interested in choral singing as did many of the local audiences of both choirs and eventually Marion was asked to consider forming a choir for the parents and other local adults. Marion generously agreed to do so and in August 1994 notices appeared in local parish bulletins and newspapers inviting those interested to attend for audition on the first Thursday in September 1994. While it was anticipated that there would be some interest, no one ever anticipated the 120 who eventually turned up and the entire evening was taken up with Marion auditioning applicants to decide if they could sing and, if so, whether they were Soprano, Alto, Tenor or Bass!! A committee had been formed of which John Molloy, still a stalwart of our tenors, acted as chairman and served for some years before the election of a full committee and a constitution of the choir was formally adopted. It was decided to name the choir ENCHIRIADIS TREIS, it by then being the third choir formed by Marion under the ENCHIRIADIS banner.

From a somewhat hesitant beginning, singing fairly simple songs, hymns and Negro spirituals, by Christmas of 1994 the choir was sufficiently confident to mount a performance in Malahide Community School hall on 3^rd and 4^th December with some outside soloists and by the spring of 1995 was confident enough to perform Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and “Magnificat” in St Patrick’s training college hall in Drumcondra with professional soloists on 25^th May.

Thereafter as experience and confidence continued to grow, many more ambitious projects were undertaken, the more memorable of which were:-

– Our first time to perform in The National Concert Hall, with Faure’s “Requiem” and Haydn’s “Te Deum” on 25^th May 1996

-Our first performance, under very difficult conditions, in St George’s church, Temple St., Dublin, of Handel’s “Messiah” on 26^th March 1997

-Our first overseas trip (to Prague and the Czech Republic) in 1999

-Outstanding performances of Handel’s “Saul” (1999), Verdi’s “Requiem” (2000) “an Evening of Vaughan Williams” (conducted by Brian MacKay) (2003), the 9/11 commemorative performance of Jenkin’s “The Armed Man” and Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” to a huge and distinguished audience (conducted by our current choir master Cathal Clinch) (11^th Sep 2011).

-Many other enjoyable concerts in various venues in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Cavan, Carrickmacross and many memorable overseas trips to Budapest, Slovenia, Venice, London,

Krakow, Vilnius, Lake Garda and Portugal among others.

-Providing the chorus for various Lyric Opera productions and Jim Molloy productions and singing in various choral festivals, including the “Voices of the World” extravaganza in Lansdowne Stadium

None of this could have been achieved without the hard work and enthusiasm of our founding director, Dr. Marion Hayden Doherty and her successors, Brian MacKay and Cathal Clinch and our ever helpful rehearsal accompanists, including Jillian Saunders, who currently has the patience to put up with us, to all of whom we will be forever thankful. Great credit is also due to our current committee and chairman Gary Ansbro all of whom give freely and generously of their time and to all past committees and chairpersons for all their hard work which has made participation in the choir so very enjoyable over the past 22 years and hopefully with the recent addition of many new and younger members will continue to be so for many more years to come.

Jim McCormack

April 2016