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December 2007: James Flannery

A Year of Milestones

This year marks several important milestones in the life of scholar and artist James Flannery, Winship Professor of Arts and Humanities at Emory. Now celebrating his twenty-fifth year at Emory, Dr. Flannery is also proudly presenting the fifteenth consecutive Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert, an Atlanta holiday tradition that celebrates the mystical beauty and heartfelt warmth of Celtic and Appalachian music, dance, and poetry. Performances are Saturday, December 15, 2007 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, December 16, 2007 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are $25; $20 faculty, staff, and discount category members; and $10 for all students and children.

This year the ever-expanding cast includes three Grammy Award-winners: Irish sean-nós singer Moya Brennan, virtuoso Celtic banjoist Alison Brown, and Riverdancecomposer Bill Whelan. Moya Brennan, known as the “voice of Clannad,” has been featured on film soundtracks, television serials, recordings, and the concert stages of the world. Brennan will be joined by harpist Cormac De Barra, guitarist Fionan De Barra, and fiddler Sinead Madden. Alison Brown, one of the most respected five-stringed banjo players in the world noted for her jazz and bluegrass inflected Celtic compositions, will be joined by her husband, bassist Garry West, and fiddler and mandolin player, Joe Craven. Bill Whelan's presentation will be highlighted by the singing of a seventh century Irish poem about St. Patrick and Celtic spirituality entitled Quis Est Deus?/Who is God?.

Of this remarkable performance Dr. Flannery said: “ On a popular level, the concert draws upon the huge contemporary appeal of Celtic music and dance, as exemplified by the phenomenon of Riverdance.  But beyond that, the concert also reflects the mystical beauty of Celtic spirituality – a tradition dating back to medieval times in which, as Yeats said, the presence of God is experienced as ‘concrete, flowing and phenomenal.’  Essentially, what that means is that we experience God as much in a rousing jig or reel as in a haunting prayer-poem that compares the wonder of a sunrise at the time of the Winter Solstice with the birth of the Christ Child, the Light of the World.”

Dr. Flannery is an expert on the life and work of Yeats having founded The W.B. Yeats Foundation in 1998, and also serving as the executive director of the Yeats International Theatre Festival at the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland, from 1989-1993. His work with the festival helped to establish Yeats’ reputation as a seminal figure in modern theater and drama. Among his many academic and cultural endeavors, Flannery authored W.B. Yeats and the Idea of Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice, which drama critic Eric Bentley calls “a richly distinguished piece of scholarship.” He has directed more than sixty productions, twenty-two of which are works by Yeats.

As a singer, his recording of the famousIrish Melodies of Thomas Moore is considered definitive and he has just completed another recording titled Heart Mysteries: Traditional Love Songs of Ireland. He holds a BA from Trinity College ( Hartford, CN), an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. His honors include the Georgia Humanities Council Governor’s Award for his work promoting Irish culture and its connection with the American South.

Dr. Flannery came to Emory in 1982 to found the Department of Theater Studies and Theater Emory.  Asked what the campus arts were like twenty-five years ago, he replied: “Only music had even a modest academic and artistic presence at that time.  Worse, there was an almost puritanical aversion to the idea that the arts serve any serious intellectual or spiritual purpose.  At best they were seen as a leisure time activity – a good way to blow off steam. Today much of that has changed, especially with the designation of Creativity and the Arts as a cross-cutting theme of the Strategic Plans of both the College and University…” A quarter of a century later, Dr. Flannery continues to advocate for a range of artistic and creative endeavors on campus, from encouraging student engagement in the arts to featuring a diversity of touring artists in the annual Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert.

Dr. Flannery believes that, “… the arts [are] intellectual disciplines in their own right as well as manifestations of human consciousness at its most sublime.” He strives to involve all of the community through his work as a producer, stage director, singer, scholar, critic, and teacher. Jean Kennedy Smith, American Ambassador to Ireland said: “James Flannery is a man of many talents and he has opened up for all of us new vistas of understanding, not only of Yeats’ work but also of the many and varied aspects of Irish culture…He’s a national treasure.”

Written by Jessica Moore
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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