Irish World Academy graduates to take centre-stage at Rugby World Cup

A GROUP of musicians who graduated from Limerick’s ‘Irish World Academy of Music and Dance’ have been chosen to perform on the main fan-village stage at the Rugby World Cup, in Paris, this weekend.

The welcome development was confirmed by His Excellency, Vincent Guérend, Ambassador of France to Ireland, at the Vandeleur Walled Garden in Kilrush Wood last week.

It is yet further evidence of the band’s growing popularity abroad, now fully rewarded with a big screen-stage opportunity and an expected 20,000 fans on the world-famous Place de la Concorde.

Singer-songwriter, Paddy Mulcahy (MA in Ethnomusicology) and his life-partner, Lenka Hoffmann, (stage name, ‘Lenka Fairy’) (MA in Dance Performance), typify the group’s ‘never-say-die’ ethos.

The former, who founded the band in 2012, explained their back-story: “In 2019 our band, Los Paddys de las Pampas (the Irish in Argentina) were riding a wave with gigs all over Europe as well as in South America. Blending Irish Trad and Latino rhythms and melodies with step dance and Flamenco we performed at Áras an Uachtaráin. In 2020, we headlined the very first St Patrick’s Day festivities in Santiago, Chile, at the behest of the Irish Embassy. Then it all came to a crashing halt
with the pandemic.

We even had to ‘crowd-fund’ the purchase of new airline tickets to get us home.

“Worse still, we had a full calendar year of gigs wiped-out and when we tried to stage a comeback several of our regular musicians had moved onto other projects. As a result, we have had to rebuild our musical group from the ground-up and begin transitioning from being a band to being more like a show. While all our music is still original, today we also write music with dancing solely in mind.”

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The new line-up includes Paddy Mulcahy, guitar, banjo and vocals, Fer Kenobi, a jazz guitarist from Mexico, who is the Irish World Academy’s latest recruit (MA in Composition and Creative Music Practice).

In addition, the ranks now also include silver flute player and former graduate, Áine Heslin (MA in Irish Traditional Music Performance), Liam O’Boyle on bass guitar (BA and MA in World Music), and dancer and bodhrán player, Andrea Kafonkova (stage name, Andrea K).

Lead dancer, Lenka Hoffmann, is a classically trained pianist who also plays the cuatro (a South American string instrument) and recently started playing the Harp. Lenka worked as a choreographer on the made for TV comedy-romance movie ‘Christmas At Castle Hart’ (2021) which was based and filmed In Ireland.

Originally from the Czech Republic, Lenka has lived in Ireland for the past decade after studying both Lithuanian and Russian languages together with Baltic studies for her primary degree. Having long considered a career in translation and interpretation, Lenka decided to focus on a dance career instead and became the first person to teach Irish dancing in Lithuania.

She stated: “I met Ukrainians on their very first days in Ireland, when the whole experience and the news about the war were still very fresh and scary for them. I witnessed a group of people forced to leave their homes and come to a new country with a different culture, not knowing the language. I could not even imagine what they were going through!

“The next month we were asked to play music at a small gathering to celebrate Easter which was organised for Ukrainian refugees at the Glór Theatre in Ennis. At the time, we were active with the ‘Los Paddys Continental Clare Street Show’ making us an obvious choice for the concert.

“I came up with the idea of learning a couple of Ukrainian songs and including them in our Irish setlist. The Ukrainians were playing one song very often and it had even been translated into other languages for famous singers to show solidarity with Ukraine. When we performed this song at the Easter party, people in the audience just cried. It was very moving.”

Playing multi-country European tours with the support of ‘Culture Ireland’ while simultaneously growing their domestic audience has reaped discernible dividends as the band’s popularity soars.

Keltská noc (Celtic Night) in the Czech Republic, the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, France and Festival Maritim in Bremen, Germany, are events now covered by French and German media outlets.

The thirty-year anniversary of the founding of the ‘Irish World Academy of Music and Dance’, being celebrated next year, will recall the late Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin’s (1950 –2018) vision.

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French architect Daniel Cordier’s €21m purpose-built academy, on the Clare side of the River Shannon, was funded by the late Irish-American Philanthropist Charles (Chuck) Feeney (1931 – 2023).

Paddy Mulcahy concluded: “Being around talented people can either cause you to wilt away or to try and raise your own game. I would say that Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin would certainly approve of the latter approach. After all, he successfully founded this amazing musical academy here on the banks of the River Shannon which has been so instrumental to our success.”

Los Paddys will perform live on the man stage of the Rugby World Cup village at the Place de la Concorde, Paris, this Friday at 8pm (7pm French time). They will also play a concert for the Ria Rose Breast Cancer Support Organisation at the end of October.

For more, see lospaddys.com and watch their recent viral video here.