TV show windfall funds Cork concert to raise money for Penny Dinners

If I do any singing after the concert, it will be for nursing homes and care homes. I’m almost 72. I don’t need the stress of a big audience.

Winning money on an American television game show last year prompted singer, Virginia Giglio, to spread the cash around and to create an event that will benefit Cork Penny Dinners.

Virginia, from America, has been an Irish citizen since 2023 and lives in Mahon with her lay chaplain husband, Neal Dunnigan.

She won $20,000 on the trivia show, The Floor, last year, with flowers being her area of speciality for the programme.

Having given some of the money away to a good cause, she bought her husband a state-of-the-art iPhone. The rest of the money is being used to pay professional singers and musicians, some from the U.S, to perform at ‘Virginia’s Ginormous Recital’ at the Pavilion in Cork.

With tickets for the concert costing €20, Virginia is hoping to make €3,000 for Cork Penny Dinners, a charity she ires. The concert will include show tunes, Irish tunes, pop standards, and opera classics.

This mezzo-soprano, who was gearing up for a career as an opera singer, will perform at the concert.

A member of the Cork Light Orchestra, Virginia, is going to step back from singing.

“If I do any singing after the concert, it will be for nursing homes and care homes. I’m almost 72. I don’t need the stress of a big audience.”

She would also like to spend more time playing the flute and doing visual art at Shandon Studios, where she is an artist-in-residence.

Virginia was a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma, where she spent about 30 years. She worked with the Cheyenne Native Americans studying women’s music; translating it, recording it and transcribing it. She published two books on the tradition.

“I was an opera major, working towards a doctorate of musical arts,” says Virginia. “I was going to do something about Western European music. I was living in Oklahoma, which means ‘land of the red man’. I’m sitting there, with all of these Indian tribes and wonderful musical events going on and no-one was studying them. The dominant culture was not paying attention to them.

“So I decided to change my major to ethnomusicology. I nearly broke my voice teacher’s heart. I was one of his stars, along with tenor Arnold Rawl, who is going to be singing at the Pavilion. He regularly performed at Sydney Opera House and was a favourite of Dame Edna.

“When I started working with American Native music, I didn’t leave singing behind. I found it helpful. I would do song-swapping with the people singing in Cheyenne. I had to learn the language. It’s a lot like French.”

Virginia says the aim of the concert at the Pavilion “is to bring forward some voices that Cork has not heard. They’ll hear Arnold, celebrated for his powerful and expressive voice. Also, New York City cabaret star Rita Castagna will sing. I have some Cork musicians taking part. There’s piano player, Tom Doyle, from the MTU Cork School of Music. Michael Cummins is doing all my arrangements, and his trio includes a bass player and a drummer.”

Grace O’Brien, from Rochestown, will also sing – and she is involved in a project around the preservation of Irish music, similar in ways to Virginia’s work with Cheyenne music.

Grace trained as an opera singer with Veronica Dunne in Dublin and returned to Cork to continue her training with Bobby Beare at the Cork School of Music. She now works at the Cork College of Commerce, teaching web design and computer programming.

“As a sideline, I perform locally in theatre, feiseanna, weddings and funerals,” says Grace.

She got to know Virginia during the covid pandemic when out on the Blackrock walk.

“We have a lot in common on the music side. I’m involved in a project, trying to keep Irish music alive for the next generation.

“In Ireland, we had a lot of Irish music that used to be available in the classroom in books that are now out of print. If this stuff isn’t put online, it could be lost forever. I’m trying to create an online archive of the music.

“A lot of music in Ireland could be reworked classically, Seán Ó Riada style. I’m working with a music student on the project. We have 130 songs to try and online. I don’t know some of them. They’re hundreds of years old, in Irish.

“I’m accessing the songs from books of music that were in my attic.”

At the Pavilion, Grace says there will be “a lot of cultural integration going on. I’ll be singing Fear a Bháta (The Boatman), an old Celtic lament. It was rearranged about ten years ago by Seán Ó Sé’s daughter, Áine. She made an arrangement for a quartet that I was singing with. People came up to us, asking where we got the song. They were stunned to hear it was actually an old sean nós song. That’s where my inspiration has come from, reworking a lot of Irish music.

“Now, traditionalists might not be in favour of this because they’d like to preserve the discipline and the way you should sing sean nós. But look at ABBA. They reinvented themselves through musicals. That’s what brought them to the next generation. So reworking music keeps it alive.”

Both Virginia and Grace will sing in Irish, and then in English, a song called Be Thou My Vision at the concert. Grace’s 16-year-old daughter, Heidi Rose Kelly, will accompany them on violin.

Grace is appreciative of Virginia “harnessing us and bringing talent together for the concert. We could do with more Virginias in Cork.”

Virginia’s Ginormous Recital takes place at the Pavilion on July 5. There will be a glass of prosecco or a soft drink with every ticket.