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Irish Tenor Makes Pitch for Irish Charity Via Concerts, CDs
By Mark Pattison
Source: Catholic News Service
Published: Friday, November 27, 2009

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WASHINGTON (CNS)—Michael Londra, who first won acclaim on U.S. shores by being the lead vocalist for the "Riverdance" American tour and Broadway show, is sharing some of the spotlight with an Irish charity's international aid efforts.

The charity is Concern Worldwide. The Irish-born tenor, who now makes his home in Chicago, said that in Ireland, "you grew up with Concern. You knew about them. ... They help in 28 countries around the world."

Londra, a Catholic, said he was asked by the head of Concern America, the charity's U.S. arm, to lend support and cachet to the organization. Londra agreed, but first he wanted to check out for himself the kind of work the agency does, so he went to Haiti.

"I figured a hour and a half from Miami it can't be that bad," Londra told Catholic News Service in a Nov. 11 telephone interview from Chicago. "I was on La Gonave Island. There are 100,000 people living on it with no roads, electricity, running water, any form of communication. They don't even live in shacks. The problem is that people have to walk eight hours a day to collect a bucket of water. That is just disgusting to me."

"I don't do anything big," Londra added. "I'm no Bono, I'm not going to set the world on fire, I'm not going to raise a million, but at every concert—without making people miserable—I talk about Concern and I talk about Haiti ... and hope that someone will talk to somebody else about it and look it up online." Londra said he hopes that by being Concern Worldwide's ambassador, "I raise a few bob (shillings)."

Londra was born in Wexford, in southeast Ireland. "Wexford really is a singing town. It's famous for its opera," he said. "We all sang at home."

But Londra had a gift that was recognized, and recorded, early. Someone made a cassette recording of him at age 10 as a boy soprano singing "The Donkey Song" with the Wexford Male Voice Choir. Londra included it on his new Christmas CD, "Beyond the Star," a portion of the proceeds of which will go to Concern Worldwide.

Londra said he added it to the CD because "it's who I am, it's where I come from. When I think of Christmas, I think of where I come from. I wanted the album to be like a small Christmas at home. I was 10 at the time and when I think of it, I distinctly remember that Christmas week when I sang with that choir."

He added, "One of the town historians back in Wexford" made the recording. "There was serious work needed on it to make it somewhat respectable. It was recorded on a cassette tape at the parish hall," he said. "I never knew it existed. But even before I heard it I decided it would go on the album."

Londra called himself "a total American with an Irish accent." Before spending the last six years in Chicago, he had lived 10 years in New York. "I love this town very much," he said of the Windy City, where he worships—as might be expected—at Old St. Patrick's Church, just a few blocks from his home. "I have this longing to get rid of my brogue but if I did my mother would kill me."

Although he possessed the voice, Londra didn't always make full use of it. "At 18 I walked away from it all because I had to get a real job," he said. "I became a behavioral therapist. So it wasn't until 30 that I started singing again."

It wasn't that there was an oversupply of behavioral therapists prompting him to sing again.
"My friends kind of staged an intervention: 'You know, look, you have to do it,'" he recalled them saying. "I had a really good career (as a therapist). But I had to do it. It was almost my responsibility, I guess. It was definitely the right thing for me to do in my life. I definitely miss my old job, but I know I'm doing the right thing, and I thank God I've been successful."

_________________________
Editor's Note: More information about Concern Worldwide is available online at www.concern.net.

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