ABOUT ROGER GILLEN

On a perfect spring morning in 1980, I hitched a lift to Castlebar, Co. Mayo to audition for The National Talent Search of Ireland. What happens next becomes my own piece of history as I ended up winning the talent search. On a Saturday night in April 1981, the final was broadcast live to every corner of Ireland on Gay Byrne's Late Late Show. After a stint with Maureen Potter at the Gaeity Theater in Dublin and a pantomime at the Cork Opera House, I was bound for America. In the days before the Celtic Tiger, my father cleaned out his old tool box (the box that was once the trunk he and my mother immigrated to England in as newlyweds). "Put your things in this" he said, "it'll bring you back home to us".

I met Mignon, a dancer from New Orleans, while going to school in the Mid-West. It was 1986 when we married and packed up the trunk again for the "Big Apple". Or at least that's the short version of the story. Mignon says you need maps and time lines to follow our relationship! Mignon soon began dancing with The Metropolitan Opera Ballet at Lincoln Center. Not long after that she found her true calling with Jennifer Mueller / Ther Works Dance Company, performing and touring all over the world.

I took any job I could, waiting tables and painting apartments, playing the round of open-mike nights in Greenwich Village. Stepping back into my Sligo roots, I became director of a Folk Mass music group at St. Ignatius Loyola Church. After landing an agent I toured the college circuit in the 90's and managed to get myself reviewed as Rookie of the Year in Rolling Stone Magazine. It was a time when anything seemed possible again.

Then in January, 1993, our first son Michael arrived. But Michael’s time with us was to be short and when he passed away we were broken-hearted. And a year later, as if an angel coming to heal our pain, Daniel was born. But when Daniel was only four weeks old we learned that this little angel was blind. People we knew talked about transplants and micro-chips and some talked about miracles. But there was really nothing to say.

Thankfully, in this world of contradictions, something called "Grace" took us by the hand and led us along. And it was Grace that allowed me to move beyond myself and start recognizing the gifts given me in such an extraordinary child. A child who at six, played Bach and Clementi, a child who created a tactile map of the world across our bedroom wall.

So I learned that the most precious thing we can offer each other is our true selves. No matter where we come from, it’s the story of our struggle that binds us together. In the same way that a sad song makes us happy. And it was all of these things that inspired me to get up one day and sing for those who couldn't. And once I started I didn’t stop until I was performing a show called Love’s Pure Light on an Off-Broadway Stage. With musicians and dancers from places as far away as Cameroon, Brazil and Puerto Rico, Loves Pure Light was a breath of joy, born from the songs that carried us, a beacon of light in the face of a world full of so much suffering and neglect.

And so, here I am at the end of 2006, with a sense that "anything is possible" again. I have Mignon, Daniel, and now Gabriel too. A family in New York and Ireland, a circle of friends and teachers who continue to believe in me. And all that I profess to know is that in the very minute I live, there is something wonderful to share.