Fading into obscurity may not be the worst fate of Eurovision song contestants. Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry tells Rosita Bolandof the hell that comes with winning.
The Eurovision is the albatross of the music world. Win it, and it forever hangs about your musical neck like a feathered noose, no matter how far your musical direction might alter course thereafter. Just ask Fionnuala Sherry. In 1995, the Irish violinist was part of the Norwegian band, Secret Garden, which won the contest that year with Nocturne, a mainly instrumental piece.
"For us, the Eurovision was a golden opportunity to showcase a track from our new album," says Sherry, seven years on. "It was a good thing for all the wrong reasons. The Eurovision deserves to be slagged off more than it is. It's not rocket science."
Since winning the Eurovision, Sherry and her band-partner, Norwegian composer Rolf Lovland, have found it impossible to get bookings in Europe: "We're not taken seriously here," she says. Possibly, but the other reason could well be that their music is of limited appeal to European audiences. If music was literature, theirs would be upbeat US bestseller Danielle Steele mixed with a dollop of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series: hugely popular with some and equally underwhelming for others. We're all Enya-ed out in this neck of the woods. Sherry, who is smart, personable, and striking looking with a big hairstyle, played violin for 10 years with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. "I felt I was becoming a technician, rather than a musician." She left the orchestra, and later met Lovland. He was then Norway's most successful popular songwriter, with some 60 national chart hits. The two started working together, Sherry with her classical violin training and he with his popular tunes, to create instrumental melodies with "a very, very special atmosphere".
Their website states: "We think of our music as organic story-telling melodies with straight-from-the-heart performances." The titles of the tracks of their new CD, Once in a Red Moon, reflect the blurry landscape of those heart-inspired performances - Awakening, You Raise Me Up (with Brian Kennedy); Silent Wings, Gates of Dawn, Fairytale, The Promise. Even for a nation of flag-waving leprechauns that Eamon Dunphy sees us as, it's all a wee bit hard to swallow with ease.
Still, Secret Garden regularly fill 2,500-seat concert halls. Korea, Hong Hong, China, Japan, Malaysia and parts of the US are their mainstays on the international circuit, where they are constantly interviewed on radio and television.
Sherry admits that defining Secret Garden is difficult, with each country putting their own interpretation on the instrumental-based music. "If you write lyrics, you're dictating the story. With instuments, you can indicate what's going on; open the door to someone's imagination.
"In Japan, they call us 'healing music'," she says, curling her lip. "We're like, hello? Healing music? This is nothing to do with us. In America, we're new age. That's the category they throw everyone into that they don't know where else to put them. We're also called world music, and cross-over classical."
Sherry sighs. "You know what I'd really love? A tour of provincial Ireland. We're never asked to play here."
There are eight of them in the band, plus soundmen and engineers. "We don't make popstar money because we've lots of overheads, but we're comfortable. We're not motivated by money. If we were, something would lessen in the creative side and it'd become dangerous."
Like all instrumentalists, her violin is never far either from her thoughts or her side. "It's an English-made 1790 violin. I can't sleep without knowing where it is; it's part of me. Violins are temperamental, like living things. The sound has changed even since I've had it. And it sounds different in different climates,"
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber performs on Once in a Red Moon, on a track entitled Duo. "He had a Stradivarius." Did she ask if she could play it? Sherry shakes her head, astounded. The concept of asking to borrow another musician's instrument is probably like asking some ordinary mortal if you could have the loan of one of their legs to run down to the shops. "But I had a drink with him last week," she says on reflection. "Maybe I might ask him next time."
Once in a Red Moon by Secret Garden, is on Universal Music. The band's website is at www.secretgarden.no