FROM THE priesthood to TV, the concert stage and recording studios with a succession of hit albums has essentially been the life and times of popular Cork tenor Finbar Wright.
Both as a solo singer and one of the Irish Tenors, Finbar has a legion of fans not only in Ireland but right across the world including the USA, Canada, Australia and the UK.
Outside of U2, the Irish Tenors are the most popular touring act in the US, no mean achievement in what is considered the most competitive entertainment environment in the world.
The Irish Tenors and Friends series went down extremely well with RTE 1 viewers during the summer, and the good news is that they are now preparing for a nationwide tour starting in Kilkenny on October 6. [this is a Finbar Wright solo tour] There is also a Christmas special on RTE 1.

OVER LUNCH in a Dublin hotel Finbar comes across, as he does on television and in concert, as a very likeable person with no airs or graces, and one who genuinely loves what he does for a living.
He describes his broadcasting debut on RTE Radio 1 as "a uniquely exciting experience an the sweet shock of it brought a surge of adrenalin that you could never forget. It was on a cold day shortly before Christmas in 1990, having just returned from honeymoon," he says. "I was planting a beech hedge in our new garden and enjoying the music being played on the radio by Ronan Collins when, in his usual mischievous way, he announced a new recording from an upstart from Cork. Right away I recognised the the opening strains of 0 Holy Night which I had just recorded in London, with Phil Coulter as producer. So with the broadcast of that very first single, my recording career was officially baptised, on national radio. My first full album of recordings was called Because, and it was again produced by Phil Coulter. It was Phil who guided my introduction to the world of recording studios with a very steady hand, and managed to bring a nice modern sound to many of the old favourites we chose to include.
As we were finishing the sessions, Phil decided that we needed one more track, and immediately I suggested My Lagan Love which we both knew well. Phil sat at the piano, the sound engineer opened the microphone, the tapes rolled and we recorded the song in one take with no edits. To this day it is my own personal favourite recording. It is a lovely song, and needless to say, it is among the finest in Ireland's musical tradition."

Finbar is understandably proud of his Cork roots, with the Rebel County never far from his thoughts when he is away on tour. Coming from a farming background, he was born in Kinsale and raised in Ballincollig 'just yards from the sea'. He lives with his wife Angela and their two children Fergus, fourteen, and Ileana, twelve, in Farran, which he describes as being 'about halfway between Macroom and Ballincollig.' Angela comes from Farran. "It's funny really," he says. "While I was raised on a farm and now live on a farm, and I always had a yearning early on to be a farmer, we are not really farming people as such. I don't know too much about farming and all that goes with it, but when you grow up in a farming family, it's in your blood and it never leaves you. We don't have cattle, just hens and ducks and horses. Quite a number of my friends and relatives are farming people, and we live in a farming community, but that's as far as it goes I'm afraid."

A DEVOTED family man and the youngest of eight children, five boys and three girls, Finbar has a great sense of humour, laughs easily and is a real chatterbox, a factor that is always welcome in interviews such as this one. "'Finbar can talk until the cows come home," said a colleague recently. "The problem is to get him to stop talking." It is also obvious that he is quite clearly unaffected by his considerable success at home and abroad. "Sure why should you want to change," he says, sipping his tea as two lady fans wave to him from across the lounge.

FINBAR'S musical range covers all genres, from Spanish rhythms to Irish folk, from romantic ballads to operatic arias and everything in between. His voice blends well with his two colleagues in the Irish Tenors, Anthony Kearns and the newest member Karl Scully, a replacement when John McDermott left the group early this year to do solo work. Ironically, John left the group in February 2002 following the death of his mother, and Finbar came into the line-up. Two years later John re-joined, replacing Ronan Tynan who had departed to ' focus on a solo career. ' "We all get on very well. I am happy to say that Anthony Kearns and I have known each other for a long time so there is a kind of comfort thing that we get from that.

"We are really good friends outside of the music environment and that helps. Karl Scully made his debut with us on the recent TV s series and he was with us on the US tour in the summer. Karl will be with us for all our concert and TV appearances, including our upcoming Irish tour [the upcoming tour is a Finbar Wright solo tour] to be followed by a US tour and the Christmas TV special. I think he will have a fantastic career. He's only twenty-six so it is all ahead of him." Finbar began his musical education in Cork at the tender age of four, and studied piano and theory of music with Maura Hourihane, a local teacher whose dedication and love of music 'left a permanent mark on my life.' "I started the piano with her whehJ was about five and the first piece I ever did was the Cuckoo Waltz, a lovely little tune. She was a lovely woman, very generous with her time.

ALL EIGHT children were encouraged to sing and play a musical instrument by our mother Julia, still alive and well at ninety-three. It was not unusual on a Sunday morning in our house to hear our parents singing Panis Angelicus. 'Both of them were very good singers. My late father, Robert, had a lovely tenor voice. In those days everybody imitated John McCormack or whoever they heard on the radio. I also remember hearing a lot of Mario Lanza on the radio. My father was a great fan of Mario and had many of his records.

BACK THEN it was the wish of every Irish mother to have a priest in the family and my mother was no different so at sixteen I was put on a plane for Spain in the north west ; and the University of Palencia. I studied there for two years even though I hadn't a word of Spanish. As for the priesthood, however, it was a major culture shock. The months of loneliness and isolation while studying were starting to take their toll. In the first year I would have come home gladly if I had been allowed. I remember contacting Bishop Lucey after about a month or two and saying that this was really not for me. He advised me to stay until Christmas, which was a few months away, and if I still did not feel any different, he would let me come home. As it happened, by Christmas, I was fully into it.

Then I came back to Maynooth College in Kildare where I was ordained. I was just twenty-two at the time, and I believe I was the youngest priest in the world. In Maynooth I was put in charge of the liturgical music for the college and it meant I could keep up with the singing which was grand.

AS TIME went by, though, I knew the priesthood wasn't the right thing for me. I left after a few years simply because I found that my heart just wasn't in it. You need to be fully convinced, believe me. I was still in the priesthood when my brother Hugh died from a brain tumour at just forty years of age, and at that stage I seriously began to think of leaving. I was beginning to realise that life is not forever and you have to make a decision about your life and your happiness, to do something you really want to do. These things have a habit of focussing your mind fiarly clearly. I felt that if you were a priest then you should be a real priest and working in a parish. I was a secondary school teacher at the time and then there was the music which was a big part of my life. Yes, the priesthood is a very lonely life and I think you have to be really cut out for it. Also, at one time there was great respect for priests but unfortunately with all the things that has happened within the Catholic Church in recent times, it's harder for them to gain the respect they used to have. I'm definitely in favour of priests marrying. I definitely think they should be allowed. I feel that the single life is only for certain people and I also think that it would be a great support for them if they were able to have their own families. My father had passed on when I decided to leave the priesthood but when I told my mother, all hell broke loose. She was very proud of me being a priest and suddenly it was going to be all over.

I TRIED to explain to her that when I became a priest, it was not something I had a choice in. Now I said I just couldn't do it anymore, and her pleas for me to change my mind bordered on a scene involving that great Irish dramatic actress, Siobhan McKenna. The funny thing, though, is that as time wore on and she saw how happy I was in the music business, she knew I had made the right decision, especially when she saw our first child in my arms. Over the years she has been fully supportive of my career change, and when I brought her to one of my concerts in the Cork Opera House recently, she told me she had thoroughly enjoyed it." As we prepare to say our goodbyes, Finbar says: "When I left the priesthood, I considered a few other things, including teaching but I suppose it had to be the music, and I've absolutely no regrets, even with all the long travelling and the touring."


Above article reproduced with the kind permission of Ireland's Own