June 2015: Waltz for Molly at the National Concert Hall

JUNE 2015

Good evening folks,

I Hope you are keeping well this shockingly summer evening. Quick scrape the rust off the bbq!

I do need to tell you straightaway about a very special concert on this day, in 2 weeks.

"Waltz for Molly"

FOR THE THE MOLLY MC NALLY MIRACLE TRUST

Emilie Conway Quartet

Emilie Conway - voice, Johnny Taylor - piano, Dave Fleming - double bass, Dominic Mullan - drums

Friday, June 19th, 1:05pm

The John Field Room, National Concert Hall

Tickets: €18/16 | 2 Ticket Discount 30E

Box Office: 01 417 0000

emilieconway.ie | nch.ie

I first heard about Molly last summer recording our second album at Dave McCune's studios. His daughter is in school with her. Molly is 7 years old and has a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma. The school were doing a fundraiser for her treatment at the time and I just thought, I'd love to do something to help especially since I have 3 gorgeous little nieces, 3,5 &7 years, all healthy; I just can't imagine what it's like to have a sick little one. And, my musicians and I feel we have been lucky this past year with the Alec Wilder arts council award and most recently the invitation to perform in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. So do come on Friday lunchtime if you can and please spread the word .....

You can find more out about Molly and make a donation here: http://www.mollymcnallymiracletrust.com/index.html

and a beautiful song Molly's cousin Katie O Connor wrote here:http://www.mollymcnallymiracletrust.com/index.html

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Our International Jazz Day Dominican Republic - Paris Tour is behind us. Hard to believe! It was a wonderful and very moving experience. The feeling of warmth and responsiveness from the audiences for us was quite amazing - and the audience in Belles Artes was our biggest yet - 600 (which lucky I didn't know til afterwards!)

It was a joy and a privilege to collaborate with the Dominican people on Jazzomania Festival, for in the end, it really was a collaboration and Johnny, Damian and I couldn't have been more impressed by the professionalism, passion and talent. I had written lyrics to a waltz by Dominican composer Rafael "Bollumba" Landestoy so probably the highlight for me was meeting this 90 year old and hearing his very gracious approval of my lyrics and our arrangement of his music. He told me he wrote the melody 50 years ago in a monastery in Mexico and never dreamed an Irish girl would write words to it but then, he said, "life is full of surprises, isn't it true? I love that."

Here's link to a review that as far as I understand was shown on Dominican TV after we left! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Y7VARH-RM And, here's a link to my interview with Sean Brophy on Dublin City FM : http://jazzspec.blogspot.ie/2015/06/midweek-music-miscellany-wednesday-3...

My ongoing war with technology prevents me from inserting a hip photo collage here so I'll just try hammer in a few .... bang bish bash bosh.....clatter...

Take care of yourselves and each other and we hope to see you soon!

Best wishes,

Emilie

ps if anyone is any good with imacs out there and wouldn't mind to give me a tutorial - please shout as it's getting rough around here! I realise hammering images into an e mail won't work every time!