With the town backlit by a perfect blue, southwesterly sky, Julia Deli is in Pembroke Dock’s Pater Hall for a transformational experience in the company of CelloCroí, a duo joining us on the seaway from Rosslare to perform a set of pro-peace songs.
Dublin-based duo CelloCroí are making their third visit to Cwtch Coffee Shop in as many years. In 2025, proprietors Mike and Keo O’Dwyer had to put on an extra night due to their popularity; this year, only the Pater Hall opposite the cafe can accomodate the demand.
Albanian cellist Sokol Koka studied chamber music in Milan, and after relocating to Ireland, plays with the RTE Concert Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and other ensembles; he’s also guested with Altan, The Dubliners and Sinead O’Connor. Koka is motivated, he says, to “make music for people, nature and good causes” – an aim shared by his fellow musician, Wicklow’s Annette Cleary.
From a family of professional musicians, Cleary’s CV also includes the RTE Concert Orchestra – for whom she’s principal cellist – and teaching at The Royal Irish Academy. In CelloCroí, she and Koka play classical, popular, folk and film music, this time bringing a special set of 15 tunes, titled Where are the flowers – a musical journey towards peace.
“Sokol and I have known each other for over 20 years, in different musical combinations, but this all started more than a year ago, when everyone was talking about the rise in global conflicts,” Cleary tells me. “We can feel a bit helpless and removed at times – as people and as artists – like we’re in a vacuum and can’t do much about world events. But we can all be useful in how we express ourselves.
“We were wondering what it would be like to explore songs that reflect peace and resolution, and we gradually built this programme. It seemed relevant to be making a journey that was timeless and universal, not making a statement about any country, group or time. It’s our first spoken-word collaboration – it felt important to have poetry linking the pieces and setting the scenes. And to make the fullest sound possible from just two cellos, we worked hard on arrangements … long winter nights and mornings, scribbled notes, paper-flying…”
It really works, too. No effects pedals are needed to produce CelloCroí’s extraordinary soundscapes and melodies – just the deep, bassy bodies of the chamber instruments, designed to produce echo, harmonics and reverb that give a sacred resonance to the space they’re played in. The narrator, Niall Byrne, is Cleary’s husband: an English and history teacher by day, he was surprised – though honoured! – to be asked to get involved reading poems of peace. “Apparently, as I’m a teacher, I can project!” Byrne laughs.
This evening, a superb mix and shimmering electro-pastel lighting from Guy Johnson completes the ambience. Opening with Pete Seeger’s Tell Me Where The Flowers Are, the emotive and sensitive strings depict the circular nature of waste and war, weaving ribbons of sound around the Cossack folk tune on which Seeger based his melody.
French composer Poulenc’s tone poem C was inspired by poet Louis Aragon about a bridge on the River Ce, on which stories of both love and war had played out historically. Aragon had been caught on the bridge with others at the time of occupation, and Byrne reads his words: “The Loire carries my thoughts away / with the overturned cars / and the unprimed weapons / and the ill-dried tears.” Lara’s Theme, from Dr Zhivago, was written by Maurice Jarre (legendary film score composer, and father of Jean-Michel), reflecting themes of revolution and displacement. Sting’s Russians, touchingly arranged here, asks for peace during the Cold War.
In the interval, chatting to my concert neighbour about the full-on programme at The Pater Hall – from yoga classes, to political meetings and wrestling – local Dawn Marsden adds that the venue we were sitting in, of the Hall’s four large spaces, was the one in which she rehearsed with the town’s brass band. “We’ve been playing for civic events and church services for years – my daughter and grandchild have both been in the band at different times. It’s brought us so much enjoyment, playing for local causes.”
The Pater Hall was built as a social hub, as the town grew from a fishing village in 1814, to a garrison town with the arrival of the Royal Dockyard; silver and brass bands replaced the military ones when the Forces moved out in 1967. The scale and fortunes of the town changed again as steel, oil and power stations took their place, but this former Temperance Hall has been a magnet for entertainment throughout the port’s many incarnations.
Refreshed, we resume our journey with Bach’s Bourees – notably played by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich in 1989, as the Berlin Wall was dismantled. Cleary and Koka chose this piece in recognition of the artist, whose long record of activism gained him the Award of the International League of Human Rights and other merits for peace.
With complex, close harmonies, CelloCroí next rework the 17th-century Tabhair Dom Do Lamh / Give Me Your Hand, an Irish folk tune that “seeks reconciliation after conflict,” before leaping into a lilting tango, ending in notes of trepidation and uncertainty from Goran Bregovic’s magical realism movie Underground, documenting the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Cleary and Koka use the device of two distinct voices for the cellos, which eventually modulate and intertwine, in Gottingen, written by Jewish-French chanson singer Barbara in 1964. She had felt concern, playing over the border with memories of World War II, but realised “a profound desire for reconciliation”; Byrne, as our guide, adds, “The co-operation and peace that was fostered between France and Germany at this time led directly to the formation of the European Union.”
Incorporating A Voice From Afar by Palestinian composer Mahmoud Abuwarda, a Gaza native, the melancholy notes are anchored by his gratitude: “Separated by war, bound by love … a voice that refuses to disappear.” And the rhythms of the shivery Tango Habanera spin their webs around two Kurt Weill songs, including Youkali. “the hope that is in every human heart, the deliverance / We await for tomorrow.” Byrne reminds us that recently, Jewish and Palestinian women came together in Rome to walk barefoot in peaceful protest.
With songsheets having been placed on our chairs with the programmes, the capacity audience can give full voice to John Lennon’s Imagine and Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World to conclude proceedings. As people don hats and scarves to go home, and cellos are tucked into cases, we become aware that the last of us in the building have spontaneously formed a perfect circle of conversation – musicians and their supporters – and that it’s natural for humans to do so. An equitable shape, a symbol of harmonious and supportive embrace.
CelloCroí, Pater Hall, Pembroke Dock, Mon 30 Mar
words JULIA DELI
