SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

The month of March can mean a pot of gold
to Irish Tenor Mark Forrest,
but he'll sing in sunshine or in shadow

By Richard Willing
Photographs by Paul Fetters

     In the Sanctuary of a McLean church, a fundraiser for a Northern Ireland charity is about to begin.  The entertainment, Irish tenor Mark Forrest, straightens his tuxedo, closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and bursts into not "Danny Boy," not "My Lagan Love," not even "Toora-loora-loora."  The Irish tenor begins with a medley of Broadway show tunes.                                                                 
     By combining Andrew Lloyd Webber with Mother Machree, plus some Catholic hymns as the spirit moves, the 28-year-old immigrant has carved himself a harmonious niche in his seven years here.

     Forrest is no saloon tenor.  He's a university-trained oratorio singer in the grand tradition of Frank Patterson, Ireland's current tenor king, and the immortal John McCormack.

     March, with St. Patrick's Day, is a guaranteed income stream.  From his home in Lake Ridge, Virginia, Forrest sallies forth to work the "shamrock circuit" - concert halls, Ancient Order of Hibernians galas, Friendly Sons of St. Patrick benefits across the Northeast and upper Midwest.

     In a good year, there'll also be at a high profile Washington gig or two.  Since 1995, Forrest has played the White House, the Irish Embassy, and Speaker Newt Gingrich's lunch at the capitol.

     His audiences are Irish immigrants - or more likely their descendants, nostalgic in that Irish way for the music of a nation most have never seen.  It's the rakin' in o' the green - $1,500 to $2,500 a show.

     And the other 11 months of the year?  Slowly but surely Forrest has built a following playing parish halls, birthday parties, senior centers - even a Jewish wedding - up and down the East Coast with occasional forays as far west as Alaska.

     The work keeps Forrest in shillelagh polish and has allowed him, wife Muriel, and their four- and three- year-old sons to buy a new home.

     Forrest's career was launched by an unlikely patron.  Ten years ago, while living in Ireland, he lined up a summer job painting the offices of the Archdiocese of Washington.

     "Walnut cream!"  Forrest remembers, not entirely happily.  "We went through every can of it in Hechinger's collection."

     Washington's archbishop, James Cardinal Hickey, heard the 18-year-old Dubliner singing at daily Mass.  "He had a beautiful voice," recalls Hickey.

     The cardinal arranged an audition at nearby Catholic University, which gave Forrest a scholarship to study voice and performance.  The young man had planned to return to Ireland and work in a bank.

     Forrest volunteered to sing at a televised Mass.  Former Redskin quarterback Mark Rypien saw it and booked him to sing at his wedding.  When senator Edward Kennedy was looking for a singer, the Irish Embassy nominated Forrest.  He sang at the going-away party for Jean Kennedy Smith as she left to take up her duties as ambassador to Ireland.

     Pat Collins, the WRC-TV reporter, has emceed Forrest concerts.  The charm, Collins says, is the combination of a "riveting voice" and the "melancholy of Irish songs."

     "You sit there and say, 'These are the songs my parents played on their old 78s,'" says Collins, the great-grandson of an immigrant ditchdigger.  "You find yourself missing Ireland, even if you've never been."

     The music helps.  "In an Irish song, somebody's got to be dead by the end of the first verse," Forrest says. "It's a rule."

     Forrest has his own pool of sadness to draw from.  His second son, John Patrick, now three, was born with peroxisomal disorder, a rare nerve condition that has left the child blind and confined to a wheelchair.  A third son, Francesco, was born with a heart condition and lived only five days.

     Forrest, a firm pro-lifer, calls his experience "challenging, exhausting sometimes, but never not an affirmation of God's power and goodness.

     "A little boy loved us deeply, and we knew that love and we had it for a short time-that's not sad," he says.

     "What's sad is playing a concert in Florida and meeting a retired executive who worked 40 years and paid no attention to his family, and now he can't get back that time... You'd be amazed how often I hear that story."

     That, Forrest says, is why he limits his work to four nights a week and has not sought parts in touring companies of Broadway shows.

     "If you ask where my career is headed, maybe it has arrived," he says.
     "Maybe this is my mission.   It's not a bad thing to do now, is it?"