Dr. Len Ratzlaff gives the trophy a smooch

Pure exhilaration. For a few brief seconds, that was all my brain could register as I stood onstage with my fellow choristers before a roaring audience at the Cork Opera House on a warm evening in May. It was the fourth day of my trip to Ireland with the University of Alberta Madrigal Singers, and we just finished our competitive performance at the 46th annual Cork International Choral Festival. All the grueling rehearsal work, memorization and practice had finally paid off. All the doubts and fears running through our minds as we nervously warmed up amidst paintings and sculptures in the art gallery next door were allayed.

(Can you remember all the Italian in Zefiro Torna? Do you think it's alright to follow a beautiful setting of Ave Maria with an American spiritual in which we stomp our feet on the stage? Is my bow tie on straight?)

We gave the performance of our lives. Right after the concert, a van whisked us across town to Jury's Hotel, where a festival organized ceilidh (and all the drinking and dancing which accompanies it) awaited. The superb traditional band carried on late into the night as many of us-still decked out in our tuxedos and dresses-mingled and danced with locals and members of some of the other international choirs in attendance.

The cliffs of Moher

The following evening saw us back at Jury's with an even greater cause for celebration: we won the Fleischmann International Trophy for the best choir at the festival. It was both the final night of the festival and our last night in Cork, and counter to some predictions ("They wouldn't throw another big party on a Sunday, surely."), it was another night of extreme merriment.

Singers began to trade songs back and forth across the hall, led by an entertaining performance by the festival's second-place finishers, a Swiss men's choir from GuyŠre. After a few pints of Guinness or Smithwick's, the songs seemed to get immeasurably better (as well as a fair bit louder). The rest of the evening provided ample opportunity for more singing, dancing and, of course, posing with and toasting the trophy.

I don't think many of us in the choir expected to travel across the Atlantic and win a festival. I know I was more concerned about just performing credibly! Our win in Cork and the enthusiasm surrounding the festival literally carried us through the rest of our tour, where we sang our way to both coasts and saw the tourist-friendly charm and modern realities of Ireland today.

Some Irish are more outspoken than others, as we soon found out in the refreshingly gritty Limerick. One of the Madrigal Singers was carrying Frank McCourt's book, Angela's Ashes, and walked past an older man on the street.

Seeing the book, the man immediately burst into a tirade. Apparently, he grew up with McCourt and maintained the author "didn't go without shoes for a day in his life!" That story made the rounds fairly quickly on the tour bus to Galway.

For the remainder of the trip, we were immersed in the incredible natural beauty of Ireland, from the "moonscape" of the Burren to the breathtaking cliffs of Moher. Wherever we went, we felt the history and connection of the Irish not only to their past but also to Canada.

There was the bartender with the cousin in Lethbridge and the priest who, during a church service in which we were singing a mass, recalled the Irish immigration to Canada during the famine. There was the old woman who, after I asked her for directions to Dublin's St. Patrick's Cathedral, not only walked me there but told me all about her friends in Medicine Hat and even invited me to dinner.

Though I'll never forget the stillness of St. Mary's Cathedral or the excitement of the festival's performance, my most enduring memory of the trip is undoubtedly the warmth of almost everyone we met. And of course, there was always the question: "When are you coming back?"

Soon.

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