Courtney McGrailMary O’Donnell meets the driving force of a parish choir
When Derry music maestro, Evelyn McGinley, celebrated 40 years as organist in her local church she was presented with a pillar of crystal, engraved with the words ‘Semper Fidelis’, meaning ‘Always Faithful’, by the priest who welcomed her as St Brigid’s first organist, aged just 13 years old.
At a special celebration in St Brigid’s, Carnhill with family, friends and parishioners, Fr Seamus O’Connell told Evy, as she is fondly known, that she has been “a pillar of strength and goodness in the founding of the Church of St Brigid, and a shining light of dedication and service”.
She also received a specially commissioned piece of artwork from the parish, which wove together the story of the Carnhill Folk Group and the Junior Choir.
Her strong desire to be involved in music ministry as a teenager was first nurtured in Evy’s childhood home, where music and faith were central to family life, and she credits “the wonderful leadership” from the priests who have served in the Carnhill parish for encouraging her and others to use and share their talents.
Musical gatherings
She recalls her parents sending her, as a seven-year-old, for piano lessons with a music teacher who lived on their street, and the regular musical gatherings in her grandfather’s house around the piano played by her aunt.
So, when a new parish was established in Carnhill in 1974 to serve the growing number of housing developments, the teenage Evy was well ready to take on the role of organist and received much encouragement from Fr O’Connell.
“Fr Seamus pushed very much that it was the people and not the priest that was important, so he had the courage to tell me to play away,” says Evy.
And that is what she did, leading St Brigid’s Junior Choir from 1974 to the present day, and St Brigid’s Folk Group from 1976 to 1996.
Evy and the folk group played at Westminster Cathedral in 1978 for Cardinal Basil Hume. Recalling how this came about, she explained that St Brigid’s Folk Group became very popular from 1976 onwards and took part in many BBC broadcasts.
She added: “We sung at a Mass in Derry attended by someone from St Joseph’s Pastoral Centre, in Hendon, London, and created such an impression that we were asked to sing at a national Mass for disabled people in Westminster Cathedral.”
While there, they met Cardinal Hume, worked with Kevin Mayhew, a London-based music publisher, and learnt of the sudden death of Pope John Paul I.
Evy recalls attending a very interesting youth meeting on the day of the Pope’s death was announced, during which Cardinal Hume, who had known John Paul I well, shared some lovely memories of him.
As well as doing many television and radio broadcasts at this time, the folk group recorded two religious albums, entitled Look Beyond and Behold, and set off on a tour through Europe in 1985. A 24-year-old teacher in a local primary school at the time, Evy describes the experience as “fabulous”.
They sang in a monastery in Genoa, in Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris and with the Taizé community in Burgundy, before going on to sing at 13 weddings while staying at the Irish College, in Rome, and in Castel Gandolfo for Pope John Paul II, thanks to Bishop Edward Daly.
While Evy found she had to cut back on her musical commitments when her second child was born, she continued to lead the Junior Choir, and over the last 40 years they have raised around £16,000 for charity through their live crib at Christmas.
Reflecting on how much joy her involvement with music ministry has given, she says: “You make so many friends through music and whenever we meet up the friendships are just as strong, as they are based on more than running to discos together.”
The Junior Choir has about 15 members, and when former members return home for the holidays at Christmas and Easter it becomes a community choir, with the mummies and grannies joining in too.
Former choir members now have various careers and live in different parts of the world. Some have made successful music careers, like Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, and many of them are now making their own contributions to music in their parishes.
Feeling strongly that lay people should be involved in their church, Evy says: “If you are part of that congregation, that family, you should be making your contribution as everyone has a role to play.
“When kids say they can’t sing I always tell them not to worry, that God made them and He doesn’t care about that and they should sing along when they are at Mass.”
Evy is looking forward to celebrating 25 years of marriage to Peter O’Donnell next year, and their three children, Dermot, Clare and Rory, have all participated in the choir.
She stresses that she does not see her role of playing the organ at Mass as that of a performer. “I am not there to perform at all. The way I see it is that you have to be there to enable people to pray. We do our practicing on a Wednesday night and prepare for the Mass, and then we pray it on a Sunday morning.”
Impressed at how advances in technology can be used to enhance the experience of singing at Mass, Evy points out that St Brigid’s has been using PowerPoint for about 14 years now to display the words of the hymns being sung, so that the congregation can sing along.
Very happy in her parish, she says: “St Brigid’s is very much a people’s church. It is not the priest or the building, it is the community – and it is a fabulous community.”
The 53-year-old music teacher has been teaching in St Brigid’s College, Carnhill, for the past 27 years, and is a gifted player of the piano, guitar, organ, violin, and whistle, despite having lost the baby finger on her left hand when she was 21 years old, after climbing over a fence to get away from a dog!