Music-mad Keara lifts hearts with Ignite Choir

City Lives – Keara Sheeran explains the power of church music to Bernie NÍ Fhlatharta

Joyful is an apt word to describe Keara Sheeran whose face lights up when she talks about her work with a church choir that she founded five years ago.

And just last week she looked the part too when she played Sister Bertha in the Power Production’s Sound of Music in the Town Hall.

Keara was immensely proud of being on stage with five members of the Ignite Choir, which was very different to performing in St Joseph’s Church on Presentation Road every second Sunday.

The singer, who was raised in Ballybane until her family relocated to Tuam when she was 15, was reared with church music. Her father Peter is well known in music circles in the city, having started the Sunday evening Folk Mass in the Jes Church, St Ignatius’. Sadly when the family relocated, it petered out.

“When I returned to the city to start working seven years ago, I went along to the Jes to see what was happening. I was very surprised to see a very small congregation and no music. I couldn’t believe it. It was very emotional for me as I had so many childhood memories of the church. . . I knew the priests like they were the grandfathers I never had!

“Afterwards, I approached the priest and asked him where the music was gone. He was new and had no memory of the Folk Mass so I offered to provide the music and they took me up on it and out of that came the choir which was originally called the Jesuit Church Choir, until we moved to St Joseph’s two years ago.

“I thought Ignite was a good name when we made the move as we were creating sparks and it was a new start for us. There are 49 in the choir but on average we have about 22 on a Sunday and the gallery just about holds us!”

Keara works in Boston Scientific but her real passion is music. She loves being musical director of the choir and stresses that the members sing voluntarily, though she recently set herself up as a wedding singer.

She gets a great buzz from the choir and seeing how their music moves people in church. Her background is in church music – her parents, especially her father, got involved in the Christian Charismatic movement of the seventies – so it is ingrained in her, and she has a very wide repertoire of songs to draw on.

“I like most music except honky-tonk country music and recently we started singing contemporary songs at the end of our Masses. Recently we did Bob Marley’s One Love, One Heart and the congregation loved it.”

On the question of religion, she believes that it is a very personal matter and explains that her father always said to preach the gospel but only use words if necessary. He served through his music and although her parents now live near Glenamaddy, she coaxed him to return to his music in Renmore Church, where she also sometimes plays. In fact she still plays the keyboard and sings in the Jes too but without the choir, whose home now is in St Joseph’s.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.