A global audience will watch the concert The Story of Love composed by Dublin-born composer and musician Willie Hughes, to be broadcast on Saturday October 15 and Sunday October 16 from Knock Basilica. The concert will be streamed live on the website of Pope Francis' recently launched prayer app. The Pope’s video for the month of October, featuring his prayer intention, will be screened as part of the concert.
Following the successful performances at Farmleigh House and Dublin Castle The Story of Love concert will be staged at the recently refurbished Basilica at Knock Shrine. After the show in Knock, The Story of Love will tour the USA.
The concert brings together a production team of top Irish professionals including Niamh White, former director of The Late Late Show; Mark Cahill, music producer for Liam Lawton; Fiona Cunningham, production designer The Voice of Ireland; and Luis Peveda, who has worked on Riverdance. The concert is a four-part love story of love, loss, forgiveness, and reconciliation told through songs composed by Willie Hughes and performed by Italian singers. “It’s great to have such talented singers perform your compositions. They’re young Italians who sing in English but with the hallmark of the wonderful passion we associate with the Italians.”
The opening sequence is a screen presentation of creation, along with the Sistine Chapel Choir. Screenings feature throughout the concert which ends with a massive Universal Choir of Love made up of choirs from around the world, including the Sistine Chapel Choir Rome; St Patrick's Cathedral Choir New York; Metropolitan Cathedral Choir Mexico City; choirs from Hiroshima, Manila, Melbourne, and many more countries. In a grand and groundbreaking finale, they will all video link in to sing: 'We Believe: It's All About Love.'
Concert composter Willie Hughes says the aim of the concert is to celebrate the interconnectedness and the interdependence of humanity, planet earth, and the divine, and to promote inclusiveness in a world increasingly dominated by negative patterns of exclusion. Hughes added that Mary the mother of Jesus appeared to the local people of Knock at a time when they were in great distress, suffering from famine and poverty, saying: “She appeared and silently fed their hearts with her compassionate love. Since its first performance at Farmleigh the spirit of The Story of Love has been fired by Mary's strong, feminine, inclusive love. When I first came to Knock to discuss the production with the Rector Fr Richard Gibbons, I had a strong sense that this was exactly where Mary wanted me, and the show, to be.”
Tickets for The Story of Love concert are available from www.ticketmaster.ie and from the Bookshop and Mass Card Office, Knock Shrine. For more information call (094 ) 93 88100
