Bloomsday Can Be Easy On The Ears

You thought we had run away from Bloomsday. The running is over, but the original Bloomsday — June 16 — is just ahead, waiting to be celebrated.

If you are a reader instead of a runner, June 16 is the day in 1904 when the events in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses” take place, and Bloomsday is called that in honor of two of Joyce’s characters, Leopold and Molly Bloom. (Don Kardong, the Spokane athlete and entrepreneur who founded the Bloomsday run in 1977, named it after Joyce’s Bloomsday, by the way.)

The musicians in the concert series Zephyr celebrate James Joyce, Irish music and Bloomsday Tuesday at The Met with a concert of music inspired by Joyce. Zephyr founder and pianist Kendall Feeney will be joined by Irish harpist Jan Turley, flutist Bruce Bodden, violinist Tracy Dunlop, clarinetist Anthony Taylor, cellist Cheryl Carney and singers Heather Peterson and Tod Rainey. Irish poet and Eastern Washington University professor James McAuley will read portions of “Ulysses” and some of Joyce’s poems from “Chamber Music” and “Pomes Penyeach.”

“I know there are musical Bloomsday celebrations in the U.S., in Ireland and elsewhere,” Feeney says. “Since we have our own Bloomsday here in Spokane, it gave me another reason to make a concert that would honor Joyce’s Bloomsday here.”

Joyce was a good singer, and more than once, he considered a career in singing. He was a friend of the famous Irish operatic tenor John McCormack as well as composers Philip Jarnach and George Antheil, and Joyce took a lifelong interest in opera. His novels and poems are loaded with musical references.

Feeney found references to Joyce’s singing and uncovered settings of Joyce’s poems by Irish and non-Irish composers. The Irish are represented on the Bloomsday program by two works written by composers who might have even known Joyce, “Goldenhair,” written in 1980 by the then 66-year-old Walter Beckett, and “Tuttoe Sciolto” by Havelock Nelson, written in 1951 when the composer was 34.

Contemporary Irish works on Tuesday’s program include Martin O’Leary’s settings for mezzo-soprano and Irish harp of poems from Joyce’s “Chamber Music” and Ian Wilson’s settings of verses from “The Trieste Fragments” for clarinet and speaker.

Irish music has proven irresistible to non-Irish musicians, too. Feeney has chosen the Jig from Swiss composer Frank Martin’s “Trio on Irish Folk Melodies,” and American composer John Corigliano’s arrangement of three Irish folk songs for flute and tenor.

Irish dessert and drink will be served at the reception following the concert.

Zephyr will perform at 8 p.m. Tuesday at The Met. Tickets are $15 and $12 ($8 for students), available at G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT.