Tenor Anthony Kearns to sing benefit for St. Joseph Parish Schools

Anthony Kearns, a founding member of The Irish Tenors, will perform a benefit concert for St. Joseph Parish Schools on Saturday, Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. in St. Joseph Church, 1382 Highland Ave., Needham. Tickets for the event are available at the rectory or online at www.saintjoes.com; concert-only tickets are $35, while tickets for the concert and a meet-and-greet 30 minutes after its conclusion are $50.

The money raised by the concert will be used to support the general operating budget of the schools, according to Liz O’Connell, the concert’s organizer.

St. Joseph’s has been educating students since 1954, when the Sisters of Charity began teaching at the elementary school. The Monsignor James J. Haddad Middle School opened in 1996 and expanded the parish’s reach, bringing with it a mission of encouraging students “to think for themselves, not just for today, but for a lifetime as they develop an awareness of their place in society.”

Both schools share the charge of educating the whole student: mind, body and spirit.

The concert is one of several benefits scheduled during Kearns’s fall tour of the United States. He says he enjoys being able to give back to the community like this. “If we can help on our way, we will. We’ve all been helped in some shape or form along our path in life.”

Kearns, who hails from a small village in County Wexford, Ireland, knows the value of education. “There’s no guarantee in the world we live in today of work at any level, and that’s the scary thing,” he says, “Never has education been more important than it is now, with the current climate and the way the world has gone, and the economies.”

Recognized in 2010 by the Irish Music Association as the best Irish Tenor in the U.S., U.K., and the European Union, Kearns has a number of operatic roles to his credit, along with his 13-year, ongoing association with The Irish Tenors. He sang the title role of Faust, Don Jose in Carmen and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, all in Ireland; and, in the U.S., Romeo in Romeo & Juliet: Then and Now, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Faust, all for Opera Naples in Florida, and Alfred in Die Fledermaus in Colorado.

Earlier this year, he sang at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library at a celebration of the Kennedy family’s roots in Ireland. “I’ve never heard a better Irish Tenor voice,” the late president’s sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, had previously remarked upon hearing Kearns sing a tribute to her brother at an event in Ireland.

The Nashville Scene called Kearns “a superb singer, possessing a lyrical, virile, disciplined voice; he is a confident, compelling performer.” And critic Peter Landsdowne wrote, “He may well become the Tenor of our Times.”