The boys are back in town with must-see concert of the year!

It’s 50 years this year since the young O’Hagan brothers encountered fellow boarder David Delargy and their voices blended into a sound the world has come to know as The Priests.

Brothers of a piano-playing nurse who shared her love of song with patients to the end, it’s not surprising that music has always been a source of comfort and joy for Fathers Eugene and Martin O’Hagan: a form of soul-singing in which they found expression and fulfilment.

Mrs Joan O’Hagan, formerly Daly, nurtured her family’s musical interests from an early age, encouraging them to share their talent wherever they went – at house parties and hospital wards alike. The family of six, including two sets of twins and a sister sadly deceased, moved from Derry to Claudy before Martin and Eugene were born (Martin being the youngest twin by 10 minutes) before relocating back to the city again in the early ‘70s where their father worked as a civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture.

“Our mother played, taught piano and sang. She was very gifted and involved in various musical circles locally. Growing up she was the one who introduced us to that particular facet or charism in our lives,” Father Martin explained.

In less than two weeks, Saturday March 24th, the Priests will join the accomplished Derry soprano Margaret Keys on stage in a charity concert in St Columb’s Hall Derry, to raise funds for the restoration of St Columba’s Church Long Tower.

From their earliest years the Long Tower, just across the river, was familiar to them.

“Even though our parish was St Columb’s Waterside, we’d have visited the Long Tower frequently. Our mother walked ‘over the town’ with us following behind like a row of ducks and she almost always called into Long Tower for a visit.”

She, and by extension, they – had an enduring association with the both the building as a house of God, and the significance of St Columba/Colmcille in the formation of their sense of faith, identity and place.

Derry homecoming concert to raise funds for Long Tower Church

Fr Martin O’Hagan rewinds the musical odyssey behind The Priests’ global success ahead of a joint homecoming concert with soprano Margaret Keys

“From a young age I was conscious of the rich history of this beautiful church. Its homilies in stone, word and painting spoke to me, although I couldn’t have articulated it that way at the time.

“It’s still a big part of our lives. When I bring visitors back to our hometown, I bring them to Long Tower. They always remark the beauty of this unique building, but also the prayerfulness they find there. My own mind automatically goes back to all the people who sat in those seats, where we sit now, for so many years - indeed centuries.

“And back again to the great monastery of St Columba and a sense of legacy, of inherited faith. Columba still is and always will be a big part of our city.”

Growing up in the mixed Waterside community, music and song Fr Martin suggests, has always been a common thread linking the patchwork of neighbourhoods and parishes of different traditions and faith backgrounds in this city.

“We returned to Derry at a very sombre, turbulent time – an atmosphere and reality I remember distinctly as a child. But music was a saving grace in the midst of all that people experienced.

All proceeds are in aid of the Long Tower Church organ repair fund.

"We sang at little concerts with our mother and that opened up a whole new world to us. Music back then, as it has always been, was a wonderful way of building bridges between different faiths and backgrounds. We were very close for example to our next door neighbours [from a Protestant tradition]. As children around the same age, our musical personalities just clicked. They were lovely, wonderful people and we still meet up a couple of times a year.

“This was a time when the city was overcast, people suffered in different ways and that should never be forgotten. For us, music was a medicine and St Columb’s Hall – an oasis of healing in the heart of the city. It was a place that reached out to people of all backgrounds and welcomed them in through those great big doors.

“If that stage could speak, it would have a powerful story to tell. The hall is fantastic not just in its position in the city but also in its position at the heart of people’s lives.”

Like so many of their contemporaries, the brothers competed in the annual Eastertide celebration of all things artistic, musical and Gaelige – known as Feis Dhoire Cholmcille.

But it was at another tower, a boarding school for boys in the Glens of Antrim that their musical horizons broadened into opera and the Gilbert and Sullivan oeuvre.

St MacNissi College, better known as Garron Tower, was also the setting of an unplanned encounter that turned the brothers into a trio. Enter David Delargy, one third of the clerical group and described by Martin as “an honourary Derryman”.

“Garron Tower introduced us to many more opportunities in terms of festivals and competitions, as well as musicals and very memorably - Gilbert and Sullivan.”

Coming of age at the height of pogo dancing and punk, Fr Martin cites Thin Lizzy and the Undertones among the top pop bands of his youth.

“We also loved Van Morrison. And being from Derry we were very proud of the Undertones. To this day, the Undertones is a name and an association with the city that still resonates in music industry circles.

“And Abba too would have been a big part of our lives growing up. Those tunes were embedded in our youth.”

But if there was a single recurrent soundtrack to their childhood, it was the singalong hits of The Sound of Music blockbuster. “We were presented, singing away, all round the north–the Von Hagan family no less! We didn’t tear down the curtains and start making things. But there was so much musicality and joy in the songs – we loved it and so did our mother.

“She was a nurse by profession, working in the old City and County Hospital. She loved singing so much that the matron took her aside one day and reprimanded her. ‘Are you here to nurse or to sing Joan Daly?’ And my mother pluckily replied, ‘A wee bit of both matron’.

“That wonderful sense of care for the patients’ emotional as well as physical wellbeing, lasted her whole life. One of mine and Eugene’s earliest memories was of being taken into hospitals with our whole family, to sing for the patients.

“Our mother did that right up to the very end when she was going through major heart surgery. She sang to the other patients on the ward and we had to sing of course as well.”

Over the years his musical tastes have evolved into an eclectic mix of different genres: “I enjoy Mary Black very much, a bit of jazz…on the classical side we’ve had wonderful opportunities to attend so many different concerts and I still dip into a lot of classical listening.”

Ahead of the ‘great big night’ in Derry, Fr Martin promises “something for everyone”.

“We hope it will be a night when people go out to feel refreshed and uplifted, a night when people forget about the difficulties and anxieties that weigh us down and just sit back and relax and soak up the sheer joy and emotion of the music and songs.

Margaret Keys

“This will be a very Derry gathering and of course we know Margaret very well. Margaret will have her own treasures to perform – from different solos to well known favourites. And she encourages lots of audience participation. Eugene, David and I will do some solos as well as classics like Schubert’s Ave Maria and Ave Verum by Karl Jenkins who celebrates his 80th birthday this year.

“There will be an Irish section, Irish ballads, lots of banter and a bit of humour. We will perform a bit of Van Morrison as well, maybe the Beatles – so a mix of sacred and secular repertoire. And songs like You Raise Me Up, which has strong spiritual overtones.”

Back when the three first sang together as schoolboy boarders in 1974, no one would have anticipated just how acute the shortage of priests would become locally and nationally.

Today the prospect of fulfilling busy ministries in expanding cluster parishes and squeezing in even a mini-concert tour, seems unlikely.

“This is a very special year for us and we are delighted to be back. But as priests, yes, we face certain pressures and challenges.

“In our role as priests we could be given two or three parishes to serve. That’s going to throw a whole new light on what we can and cannot do. So we are looking at all of that at the moment.

“It has become increasingly difficult coordinate our three diaries. This concert, for example, was planned well in advance, it had to be.”

Commitments like this, he intimates, will become more difficult in the future to fulfil.

As The Priests or not, he deftly asserts, “we will always continue to sing in some permutation. It’s been part of our lives - for all of our lives. It’s in our DNA.”

Larks indeed that have learned to pray.