Three talented Irishmen performed a loving musical tribute to their Emerald Isle homeland Wednesday night at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, wringing emotion from folk songs and ballads and jigs with gorgeous voices.

The Irish Tenors, on an American tour that took them on to Boston the following evening, attracted an audience of adoring fans, many well-acquainted with the trio's popular recordings and television specials.

The big-voiced tenors are Finbar Wright, Anthony Kearns and Ronan Tynan. The trio has been performing since 1998, although one original member, John McDermott, since left the group and was replaced by Wright. They visited SPAC last summer, also.

The first half of the program included songs celebrating women and love, some touching, some heart-wrenching, some bawdy and fun.

Singing under filtered colored lights in front of a projected background of patterns, Kearns presented the first solo, "I'll Be Your True Love," and set a top-level vocal standard for the evening. He also delivered an endearing minor-key ballad about an insecure bachelor choosing his bride, "Come and have an Eye to Me."

Wright followed with "Red Is the Rose," in a slightly deeper voice.

Tynan, the lightest voice of the three and the most charismatic in performance, likely brought a few tears to some eyes with his heart-felt delivery of "I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen."

A giant of a man in every way, Tynan is a double amputee, standing (and dancing) tall on two prostheses. He also is an orthopedic physician, an equestrian and winner of 18 gold medals in the disabled games.

He appears to be the glue and the energy in this trio.

Tynan has grand delivery, and no one missed a word of his song about traveling to the Dingle Fair - and the marriage bed - in "Red Haired Mary."

All three tenors joined in another old favorite, "Rose of Tralee," their voices evenly weighted, harmony accenting the arrangement.

The second half of the program turned more serious, and downright sad at times, with ballads such as "Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears," and a song about leaving a lover to sail away by prison ship.

Wright sang about leaving Ireland in the morning for Philadelphia but lost his pitch along the way.

Irish favorites including "Whiskey in the Jar" and "Danny Boy" sung as encores were welcome respites to the maudlin mood of the more serious entries about emigration and loss of family and homeland

Dressed in white dinner jackets, the tenors were operatically formal and somewhat wooden in bearing, although Tynan did his best to lighten the on-stage atmosphere and was the single point of animation on stage through much of the program.

Still, Wright lit up the stage with his smile and boyish grin, particularly when offering the surprising program entry "South of the Border," a samba that was written by an Irishman.

For his part, Kearns barely smiled throughout the program, until he announced in great humor that they would next sing a "parting song" to close the concert. He seemed happy, and his vocal quality certainly doesn't depend on facial expression: he's simply a marvelous singer.

A 40-piece pickup orchestra made up of local musicians performed behind the singers, playing a couple of Gaelic-sounding orchestral works on their own.

They delivered a cute jig-rigged arrangement of "Teddy Bears' Picnic," renamed appropriately as "Kerry Bears' Picnic."

Concertmaster was Michael Emery, who performed last week at Alsop Music Hall in Saratoga Springs, and just Tuesday as concertmaster for Schenectady Symphony Orchestra. Saratoga Springs percussionist Cynthia Lee lent her rhythmic skills on the bodhran (Irish drum).