Interview with Melanie O'Reilly
By Tracie
Reed
Melanie O'Reilly hopes to come to Tucson
in April 2003. She had to cancel her trip to Tucson in February
due to personal matters. She is now continuing her tour to other
destinations.
I asked Melanie some
questions about her up coming CD "Bitter Visions."
She is currently doing some research for her songs on women immigrants
from Ireland in the 16th-17th century who had come a long way
in their life and how they have touched others. One woman she
is doing research on is Nellie Cashman who lived in Tombstone
AZ.
TR- Are you going to tour the whole U.S.?
Melanie- No, just to go to places like Tucson. The
other places that I have to go to is Canada for this project,
you see. We really want to get to Tucson. It would be great to
make it in April. Before it gets to hot.
TR- You never know whether it's going to
be hot or rainy or what!
Melanie- Yeah! We've been there before in
2001 in April and it was beautiful then.
TR- Who were you influenced by growing up?
Melanie- Singers I was influenced by...
Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday, Sara Vaughn in the jazz field.
Influences Jazz and Irish music together. That's what my influences
are.
TR- Do you play instruments as well?
Melanie- I don't. I have a band. I mean
I play the piano. But not on stage when performing. I leave that
to someone else. (Laughs) I know better. But I have a duo as well.
My friend Sean O'Nuallain. He plays guitar. We've just been doing
one in Berkeley were we talked and performed for the Studies Department
at University of California Berkeley. We are hoping to return
to Berkeley in April which will be fantastic. Sean plays guitar
and we write songs together as well.
The new material that were doing with women
in immigration will be on the new CD, which will be out later
this year. That is very new. Part of the research as to why I'm
interested in going to Tucson is because one of the ladies who
left Colve which is at the time is Nellie Cashman. She eventually
arrived in Tucson. Many people in Tucson know about her. She's
not remembered in Ireland at all. Because she seemed to have been
quite a lady. She was a gold miner who had put a lot of her money
into helping churches. She seemed to have a big heart. She seemed
to have been bit of a nurse as well and looked after things. So,
these are the songs many other people of course immigration from
Colve that were targeting certain women, who if you like, gave
voice to. Now the album "Bitter Vision" is a combination
of songs from 300 years ago. But we give them a contemporary twist.
And there are others that we've written ourselves and are original.
Basically it comes from the actual Bitter Visions. The vision
pools were part of the traditions in the 16th, 17th century in
Ireland. Many of their poems were expressed melodies. This is
the history of what happened in Ireland.
(Melanie has songs of women of the 20th
century in Ireland and their struggles.)
Melanie- "House of the Dolphins"
samples are on our web site in mp3 samples. "House of the
Dolphins" is a more of a mixture of words- Irish material.
But jazz influences are very strong on that album with the Irish
influence. I've been nominated for two awards in Ireland.
TR- Your music is very educational.
Melanie- Yes, that's right and it goes through
varies beats in the sounds of music and yet it's got jazz influences
in it. I say mostly original material. "Bridget O Mali"
is an old song that we bring a jam harmony to. And then there's
this little track out "Dolphins" which was inspired
by a postcard my father gave me. It was of a boy riding the dolphins
with the colors of those celebrations of life. You know, based
on the Greek mythology, the book of track, one the traditions
in Ireland of the rent boy or the straw boys who dressed up in
straw costumes.
We have our own company- Mistletoe music.
Sean and myself. We've been very pleased to release the album
with our label. We are about to do a tour all around France in
March. We love France. I've done some performing in the states.
New York and World of Music festivals, smaller clubs, and again,
we find that we do really well here too. I think America understands
jazz and likes the Irish music too.
TR- Have you always wanted to sing jazz?
Melanie- I suppose I call myself a singer
of original style. Because I bring my job discipline to whatever
I sing. At the same time, when I sing in Irish or in Gaelic especially
some of the old ballets, It's definitely keeping the tradition
with my jazz influence. Then of course, there's the original material.
The doors are open if you like. You can do so many more creative
things with it. I love the old singers that I've mentioned- Ella
Fitzgerald particularly. I love the sound, the rhythm and that
sort of material. I would listen to the songs when I was a teenager-
American songs. So, yes I did make a decision when I was in my
early teens. And that developed into my own material.
TR- You were doing nursing for awhile?
Melanie- That's right! Yes! was nursing
in Esthmera. I did a degree in philosophy and French and then
I went to do this course in Esthmera which was fun for graduates.
I graduated in nursing and psychiatry. I have to say it was very
hard and very worth while and very, very good for the music business
if you like. Good for anything in life.
TR- What motivated you to go for your dream
as a singer?
Melanie- Yes, I think it was, well, first
of all I have a back ground of music theatre in my family- my
mother, and varies cousins, great uncles and aunts in theatre
and music. So it's in the blood. Doing nursing was a tangential
approach. What brought me back though to performing was I started
singing very, very casually if you like, in the hospital for the
patients for fun. In fact, it turned out to be quite therapeutic.
I then thought well, I could do this better then nursing (laughs).
I felt that urge to bring me back to performing again. So I started
doing some professional and eventually I became fully professional.
I released the healing power of music. You know it's gathering
people together and the enjoyment. And I do believe that it has
a very strong force.
TR- Did you teach yourself music?
Melanie- I did go to lessons for basic piano.
I did go to a coach, a local coach. She was helpful to bring my
own voice out. I've never forgotten that advice. Now I teach singing
myself.
TR- Do you feel like you have reached your
goal in life as a musician? If you haven't what is that goal?
Melanie- I think I have. Well, there are always
goals to keep inspiring towards. I started to feel I've reached
a goal of feuding my two main loves- which is Irish and jazz.
I'm very happy about that. So my next goal is to continue with
the immigration project. It's premiere concerts and recording.
TR- That's great you're making this happen!
Melanie- Yeah! It is. It,'s a journey. It's
a very interesting journey for myself as well. We are really,
really enjoying that and looking forward to the next installment.
(Melanie introduces me to Sean on the phone.
Sean is Melanie's partner in the business in life and he plays
the guitar for her music.)
Sean- Good morning!
TR- Hi! How are you?
Sean- Good thanks! I'm very familiar with
Tucson. I've actually done the consciousness conference there
in about 1994.
TR- So, You've been playing music for a
long time as well?
Sean- Yes, but there are these really fun
conferences which have been taken place at the extended University
run by a very good friend of mine. He's originally from Indiana
but he lived in Tucson for a very long time- Stuart Hameroff.
TR- Have you guys ever done a major in the
U.S. tour?
Sean- We've played very major venues. We've
done the Val Garish Festival, the Lincoln Center, Caper Union
in New York and were hoping to actually have time this year to
really plan it a bit more to have a tour. We actually can stay
here long enough. Yeah!
TR- With your next CD, "Bitter Visions,"
do you have anything that you would like to tell us about it?
Sean- I think the interesting story about
Ireland is actually the women's story. I think you know us guys,
have had enough of what were doing in that album.
Currently, the immigration project is taking
a form that existed in Ireland in the 17th century. The vision
poem was about the time that the Gaelic culture was released.
It wasn't going to survive as a contender in European civilization.
It's a kind of very, very tragic. In these visions poems, they
meet a woman who's a personification of Ireland. And normally,
for reasons which are never meant to be clear, there's hope at
the end of the poem.
So, in the album "Bitter Visions."
we reinterpret some of these old vision poems and then really
had a look to see. My god, look to see how women were actually
treated as soon as Ireland got it's independence. They were essentially
deprived of an awful lot of basic rights and some people
will argue they still are. So in the album "Bitter Vision,"
we are actually examining that . The next thing is, obviously,
looking at Irish immigrant women because there's a huge story
there. Most of the men came over from Ireland. This is actually
not spoken about. But, most of them were worked to death at an
early age. A class example is the Kennedy family. The original
Kennedy only lasted for four years. It was actually his wife who
brought up the family and ran businesses and so on. So that's
the kind of thing "Bitter Vision" and in the sequel,
that we are investigating.
TR- Has Melanie done any duets? If not who
would she like it to be with?
Sean- I will hand the phone to her.
Melanie- Do you mean a vocal duet?
TR- Yeah! Is there anybody that you would
like to do a duet with. Who would it be? Female or Male singer?
Melanie- There are a lot of good singers
around actually. But in my experience there is a French singer
who we met, in fact, we worked with him in project we did early
in 2002. We were joined with musicians and one singer in that
group called Na Din Pierre. She was an amazing singer but we actually
did get assigned together and we did do duets. It became improvisational
and that was very exciting. So I would love to do more with her.
There's an American singer who I just have met actually in San
Francisco and she does jazz. Her name is Katy Margolis. It is
great to see a singer who enjoys it!
Melanie- Could we could say hello to our
friends?
TR- Ok!
Melanie- To Stuart Hameroff and Prendezille.
We look forward to performing there and meeting new people. Hopefully
that will be real soon in the future.
Return to Melanie's
Home Page