A Woman's Heart

A Woman's Heart is a compilation of twelve tracks performed by six female Irish artists, namely Eleanor McEvoy, Mary Black, Dolores Keane, Sharon Shannon, Frances Black, and Maura O'Connell. The album was released in July 1992 and sold over 750,000 copies, more than any other album in Irish chart history.

2012 marked the 20th anniversary of A Woman's Heart . The anniversary was celebrated with four sold-out performances at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. Eleanor McEvoy, Mary Coughlan, Sharon Shannon, Dolores Keane, Wallis Bird, and Hermione Hennessy were on the bill. Further anniversary concerts are being planned.

In April 2012, Kiera Murphy produced a documentary entitled Our Woman's Hearts which explores how A Woman's Heart came about, why it became so popular, and the effect it has had on three generations of women. The documentary is a part of RTÉ Radio 1's series Documentary on One.

"The Secret of Living", written by Eleanor McEvoy was released in July 2012 to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the A Woman's Heart. The song is performed by Eleanor McEvoy, Mary Coughlan, Sharon Shannon, Gemma Hayes, and Hermione Hennessey.

A Woman

A Woman was Charlie Chaplin's ninth film for Essanay Films. It was made in Los Angeles at the Majestic Studio and released in 1915. The film starts with Chaplin meeting Edna (Edna Purviance) and her parents in a park; the mother is played by Marta Golden and the father by Charles Insley. In this film, Chaplin dresses as a woman to fool Edna's father. It was the third and last time Chaplin played the role of a woman on film. He played a woman in two Keystone films: The Masquerader and A Busy Day.

Cast

External links

Chris de Burgh

Christopher John Davison (born 15 October 1948), known professionally as Chris de Burgh, is a British-Irish singer-songwriter and instrumentalist. He is an art rock performer who also writes pop-oriented material. Only having had two top 40 hits in both the UK and the US, he is more popular in other countries, particularly Norway and Brazil. He is most famous for his 1986 love song "The Lady in Red", which reached number one in several countries. De Burgh has sold over 45 million albums worldwide.

Early life

De Burgh was born in Venado Tuerto, Argentina, to Colonel Charles Davison, a British diplomat, and Maeve Emily de Burgh, an Irish secretary. His maternal grandfather was Sir Eric de Burgh, a British Army officer who had been Chief of the General Staff in India during the Second World War. He took his mother's name, "de Burgh", when he began performing. His father had substantial farming interests, and Chris spent much of his early years in Malta, Nigeria and Zaire, as he, his mother and brother accompanied Colonel Davison on his diplomatic and engineering work.

Mary Black

Mary Black (born 23 May 1955) is an Irish singer. She is well known as an interpreter of both folk and modern material which has made her a major recording artist in her native Ireland, and in many other parts of the world.

Background

Mary Black was born into a musical family. Her father was a fiddler, who came from Rathlin Island off the coast of Northern Ireland, her mother a singer, and her brothers had their own musical group called The Black Brothers and her younger sister Frances would go on to achieve great success as a singer in the 90s. From this musical background, Mary began singing traditional Irish songs at the age of eight. As she grew older, she began to perform with her siblings (Shay, Michael and Martin Black) in small clubs around Dublin.

Musical career

1980s

Black joined a small folk band in 1975 called General Humbert, with whom she toured Europe and released two albums, in 1975 and 1978. In 1982 she developed a professional relationship with musician/producer Declan Sinnott and recorded her first solo album, Mary Black. The album performed well in the Irish charts and it went gold. In 1983 it was honoured by the Irish Independent and it is still referred to as one of the best Irish albums of the 1980s. Black ventured into the traditional Irish music band De Dannan and toured with them around Europe and in the US. The album she recorded with them Anthem, won the Irish Album of the Year award. During her time with De Dannan, Black continued with her solo career with albums such as Collected (1984) and Without the Fanfare (1985). These recordings took Black into a more modern musical direction. Along with the success of these releases, IRMA named her Entertainer of the Year in 1986 and Best Female Artist in 1987 and 1988.

Eleanor McEvoy

Eleanor McEvoy (born 22 January 1967) is one of Ireland's most accomplished contemporary singer/songwriters. McEvoy composed the song "Only A Woman's Heart", title track of A Woman's Heart, the best-selling Irish album in Irish history.

Biography

McEvoy's life as a musician began at the age of four when she began playing piano. At the age of eight she took up violin. Upon finishing school she attended Trinity College, Dublin where she studied music by day and worked in pit orchestras and music clubs by night.

McEvoy graduated from Trinity with an Honors Degree in music, and spent four months busking in New York City. In 1988, she was accepted into the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra where she spent four years before leaving to concentrate on songwriting.

She built up a following in clubs in Dublin with her three piece band, Jim Tate on bass, Noel Eccles on drums, and latterly Bill Shanley on guitar.

During a solo date in July 1992, she performed a little-known, self-penned song, "Only a Woman's Heart". Mary Black, of whose band McEvoy was a member, was in the audience and invited her to add the track to an album of Irish female artists. The album was subsequently titled A Woman's Heart and the track was released as the lead single.