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To honour the women by giving voice to their experience: pianist Deirdre Brenner introduces The Magdalene Songs which she brings to the Oxford International Song Festival

To honour the women by giving voice to their experience: pianist Deirdre Brenner introduces The Magdalene Songs which she brings to the Oxford International Song Festival
Deirdre Brenner (Photo: Andrej Grilc)
Deirdre Brenner (Photo: Andrej Grilc)

From 1922 to 1996 more than 10,000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries. Operated by four religious orders, these for-profit punitive institutions detained individuals against their will, committing serious systematic violations against human rights. 

The Magdalene Songs is an ongoing project initiated by pianist Deirdre Brenner that seeks to honour the women by giving voice to their experience bringing together prominent female Irish composers and the words of individual survivors into a collection of songs. The Magdalene Songs will be given by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner on 23 October at the Holywell Music Room as part of the Oxford International Song Festival.

I recently caught up with Deirdre by Zoom (her in Vienna, me in London) to find out more about the project. Born in Massachusetts, Deirdre earned a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College with a double major in Engineering Sciences and Music, and Master’s degrees from both the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Konservatorium Wien.

Song is a medium that she has worked in most. With its combination of text and music, there is a lot of opportunity and power in song performances yet the texts do not always resonate with modern audiences, though there is great potential for amplifying stories through song.

Former Magdalene Laundry in Galway, Ireland
Former Magdalene Laundry in Galway, Ireland

Deirdre’s interaction with the stories from the Magdalene Laundries partly came about thanks to her personal history, her mother is Irish, her father is American, and Deirdre works a lot in Ireland. She has known the story for a long time and it resonates with her. But the events of 2020 caused her to re-engage with the subject, providing her with plenty of thinking time. She was looking for a way to engage with the subject through music. By using the texts of the women themselves, rather then poems, was a powerful way to confront a subject that is part of history.

As with any great story, there was just the potential to tell a slice of it and Deirdre knew that the scope would have to be limited. During COVID she spent a lot of time reading, especially the results of the oral history project created by the advocacy group, Justice for Magdalenes Research which put the women’s words into the public domain. Deidre realised that this was the way into the subject. To tell the story, you do not need everything. The Magdalene Songs uses words of individual survivors extracted from the Justice for Magdalenes Research interviews, with each song named after the woman whose testimony it presents.

As this was a shared collective history, Deirdre wanted to collaborate with composers who felt empathy with the women. She spent a lot of time listening and approached composers who she felt would resonate with the subject. Initial funding meant she could commission the first wave of songs, and since then more composers have come on board. The result is a collection of songs that Deirdre is keen to share widely.

She does not feel that it is a cycle in the conventional classical or romantic sense, there is no beginning or end, instead each song is a vignette of one woman’s story. And she hopes that other performers might consider including some of the songs in their programmes.

The project is still evolving, there are currently eight songs with four more coming this Summer and a proposal for a few more next year. Her goal is to create and hour’s worth of music, and by the performance in Oxford she feels it will have reached some 40 minutes duration. But she emphasises that it is very much a long-term project.

The texts are impactful, and she feels that this performance length is sufficient for a person to absorb in one sitting. Some of the songs are powerful indeed and Deirdre mentions Deirdre McKay‘s Litany to the Magdalene Dead in particular which honours the over 2,000 women who died (from malnutrition as well as other ailments) while still imprisoned in the laundries.

Cemetery at the Former Magdalene Laundry in Donnybrook, Ireland
Cemetery at the former Magdalene Laundry in Donnybrook, Ireland

Contemporary music has become very much an interest to Deirdre, and her interest has grown over time. She feels that when we are younger, we start with the known and learn the style, and contemporary music can gradually become more important. It reflects the way we confront the collective thought. There is a lot of power in contemporary song, reflecting on the modern world.

Her favourite concert programme would be one which has one part new songs and one part known songs. She sees this as a way to engage audiences, they come because they know something and they go away having learned something. It is an exciting and winning formula.

She has recently relocated to the USA, to Madison, Wisconsin where she teaches Collaborative Piano at the University of Wisconsin. There, she was recently involved in a festival highlighting women in the arts with a focus on women composers.

When we spoke, she was looking forward to the Boyne Music Festival which takes place from 24 to 27 July 2025. The festival presents a mix of chamber music, song, classical music and contemporary, and was established in 2013 by Deirdre and her cousins Aisling and Julie-Anne Manning. The festival is based at the 18th century mansion, Townley Hall near Drogheda which is north of Dublin. And there are also events in other venues such as Slane Castle, plus events reaching out into the community including one at a whiskey distillery. The first performance of The Magdalene Songs was at the 2022 Boyne Music Festival.

Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner perform The Magdalene Songs at the Oxford International Song Festival on 23 October 2025, including songs by Rhona Clarke, Deirdre McKay, Elaine Agnew and Elaine Brennan.

This part of an Ireland-themed day at the festival on 23 October which includes:

  • tenor Hugo Brady and pianist Mark Rogers in songs based on the poetry of Thomas Moore
  • a discussion between Maeve O’Rourke (who has worked for Justice for Magdalenes Research since 2010) and Deirdre Brenner
  • Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner in The Magdalene Songs
  • soprano Soraya Mafi and pianist Ian Tindale in a programme reflecting both her Iranian and Irish roots
  • ending with Irish folk music from the duo of Zoe Conway (fiddle/vocals) and John McIntyre (guitar).

Further details from the Oxford International Song Festival’s website.

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Elsewhere on this blog

  • Satisfying all round: Opera Holland Park’s revival of its 2018 production of Verdi’s La traviata showcases a trio of fine principals – opera review
  • Will definitely stay in the memory: Gweneth Ann Rand & Simon Lepper in Judith Weir’s woman.life.song at Wigmore Hall – concert review
  • Style & substance: Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet in Buxton is a rewarding musical & dramatic feast – opera review
  • The ennui of modern life: Bernstein & Poulenc’s one-act operas from the 1950s in an intriguing double bill at Buxton International Festival – review  
  • Old-fashioned drama & a modern gloss: Cecilia Stinton directs Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera Holland Park with Jennifer France – review
  • A family affair: from a memorial to his father, Andrew Arceci’s Winchendon Music Festival has grown into a community enterprise – interview
  • Who are these people? Oliver Mears’ heavy handed updating of Handel’s Semele at Covent Garden fails to convince – opera review
  • The Barber in Benidorm: Louise Bakker’s 1970s sitcom take on Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia with a terrific cast at Longborough – opera review
  • New music to the fore: Gergely Madaras & BBC NOW celebrate Cheltenham Music Festival’s 80th birthday in rousing style – concert review
  • Spurred on by the story-telling: conductor Peter Whelan on bringing the Dublin version of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast to life with the Irish Baroque Orchestra – interview
  • Home


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