It seems Taylor Swift is more adept at having the craic than Beyoncé, according to the first-ever Irish conductor to be nominated for a Grammy.
Elaine Kelly was up for Best Choral Performance last Sunday, for leading the Trinity Church Wall Street choir’s performance of Benedict Sheehan’s oratorio, Akathist.
As a nominee in the Premiere Ceremony on Sunday afternoon, the Cork woman had ringside seats for the main event, mere metres away from some of the biggest names in music.
Ms Kelly told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘You’ve got Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and Chappell Roan – all of these guys – but they are right there. They’re literally Just a couple of rows in front of you.
‘And Beyoncé with her, like, 20,000 bodyguards standing around her table at all times.’
The opera and orchestral conductor said she was ‘in awe’ of Swift, who was ‘standing up and dancing for every single artist’ and ‘genuinely looks like she’s having the time of her life for every [performance]. She’s dancing on her own. She doesn’t care. But they all seemed incredibly friendly with each other.’
Queen Bey, by comparison, was ‘just sitting there’ for most of the night, Kelly said. ‘She has her bodyguards around her. She doesn’t do much else, I think.’
Espresso singer Sabrina Carpenter ‘was having so much fun’, as were some of the other newer kids on the block. ‘There were obviously huge stars, and then you’ve got Raye and Chappell Roan and Doechii. A lot of them are newcomers, and you could see this is still exciting for them. They were just having so much fun the whole time. They genuinely were.’ as any of the rest of us were, which was cool to see.’
Maybe the biggest thrill for someone ‘coming from the classical world’ was Irish-American opera heavy-hitter Joyce DiDonato. ‘I’m a massive fan of hers, and I’d even gone to see her in concert last week in New York,’ Kelly said. ‘I didn’t know at the time she was going to be performing at the Premiere Ceremony and then she was four or five seats down from me [at the main one].’
Ms Kelly was oblivious on the night to the furore over the outfit of Kanye West’s wife Bianca Censori, who showed up in a completely see-through minidress and nothing else. ‘A number of people texted me going “Your outfit was a little bit more presentable,”’ she laughed. ‘I didn’t know what that was about.’
Ms Kelly bumped into Cian Ducrot on the red carpet before the Premiere event as her fellow Corkonian was about to win a Grammy for co-writing the SZA track Saturn.
‘I just heard someone come up right behind me and say, “Us Cork crew have to stick together, don’t we?” It’s nice that you have a fellow Cork person, and you’re both going: “What the hell is this?” I was so thrilled for him [when he won]. He’s an amazing artist, and the nicest guy.’ such a lovely guy.’
While Ducrot went on to the Bruno Mars after party (‘Cheers for the invite,’ Ms Kelly joked), the conductor said her ‘priority was food’ by the time the ‘marathon’ day came to an end. There were only around 45 minutes between the ceremonies, leading to the sight of the cream of the music industry, decked out in their best suits and ball gowns, scoffing pizzas from trucks and meeting food delivery drivers between the venues.
Ms Kelly had spent the week mingling at various pre-show parties – including one at a theatre she had conducted in before – and said getting her name out there is as important as the celebrating.
The nominated work, recorded in New York-recorded, was the first album she has ever worked on, hinting at a highly promising career for the relatively young conductor.
‘I’m in my mid-30s – you’re not young but in the conducting world you are. There’s people conducting into their 90s. People die on the podium!’ they go right through.’
And she said this can be a barrier to being trusted and gaining respect, as can being female in a male-dominated game. In fact, it took a more productive J1 summer than most to realise she could pursue such a career at all.
‘I saw my first female conductor at a concert in San Francisco, and I was like, “Oh my gosh”. It was like a light bulb went off. I was like, “This is actually possible”, and I came back home from that trip with one goal – I definitely want to be a conductor.’
Before that she had studied music, specialising in violin. In 2014, she won the first ever Feis Ceoil conducting competition, getting to conduct the RTÉ Concert Orchestra as part of the prize, and is still the only woman to have won the competition.
Ms Kelly, from Mallow, became resident conductor and chorus director of Irish National Opera, until last year, and now works freelance.
