A male ensemble comprising of members of West Cork’s Ukrainian Choir and members of the Killarney Orthodox Community Choir will be presenting Eastern Christian Chants and Hymns of Lent and Easter at a very special recital to be held at 7pm on Sunday May 31st at the Holy Trinity Church in Schull.

Tickets for the event are free, but people are welcome to makea donation on the night, according to the organisers, who said the idea for this concert program was first mooted by members of the Anglican parish in Waterville.

They made the suggestion after hearing the Orthodox community’s male ensemble perform at a celebration of the restoration of the frescoes at St Mary’s Church in Killarney.

They believed that this form of interfaith communication through musical art allows representatives of different communities to discern common spiritual roots and recognise themselves as integral parts of a unified European Christian culture.

The choral works will be performed by the male ensemble, comprising Ukrainian singers from various parts of the island, as well as two Irish citizens from Cork.

The ensemble’s director is Oleksandr Parkhomenko, co-director of the West Cork Ukrainian Choir and the Killarney Orthodox Community Choir.

The concert program is composed of traditional hymns from the most spiritually charged period of the calendar: from the beginning of Great Lent, when Christians remember the fall of their forefathers and embark on the path of intense repentance, to the joyful feast of the Resurrection of Christ.

The largest part of the repertoire will be the traditional four-part music of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery in Old Church Slavonic.

Music by Eastern Christian composers and Easter hymns in various languages will also be performed in Greek, Latin, English, French, Georgian, Ukrainian, and Hebrew.