While it sings with one voice, the Irish Youth Choir draws on a wide range of talents from throughout the country. As it gathers in Dublin for its 21st anniversary summer programme, the choir's members tell Arminta Wallace what makes it so special

Shouted greetings and peals of laughter echo around the cloisters of St Patrick's College in Drumcondra as the Irish Youth Choir assembles for another year's summer programme. Not just any year, though. This time the choir celebrates its 21st anniversary with a concert of all-Irish music, including two specially commissioned works, at the National Concert Hall.

But first the 130 singers, who have been drawn to Drumcondra from throughout the country as if by some kind of musical magnet - from Belfast, Waterford, south Co Kerry, Co Cavan - must sign in, collect their smart, white "21st anniversary" polo shirts and settle down to a long hard week of rehearsals.

Talking to members of the choir who are perched on benches outside the auditorium, soaking up the evening sunshine, it rapidly becomes apparent that there is no such thing as a "typical" IYC singer. There are shaved heads;there are body piercings.

One woman expresses the hope that her 15-year-old daughter will join the choir in due course. Another chap mentions that he lives in Roscrea. "In a monastery," he adds, almost as an afterthought.

The choir was founded in 1982 by Cumann Náisiúnta na gCór - the Association of Irish Choirs - with a view to consolidating the future of choral music in Ireland. Over the years it has introduced young Irish singers to a wide choral repertoire, from Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms through Mozart and Haydn Masses to the Berlioz Requiem.

"There's a huge performance aspect to it all and you get a real buzz off that," says Niall Crowley, who has sung with the choir every year since 1997 - except when he took a year out to go to the US. He conducts three choirs in his home town of Waterford, "two children's choirs and a male voice".

What about the social buzz at the IYC? He looks shocked. "We do 10 hours of singing a day here, you know - it's hard work," he says. Emma MacNerney from Longford, by contrast, reckons the choir is "much more lively, much more sociable than I thought it would be". A bit of singing in the pub after rehearsals, maybe? "Oh, absolutely."

Of course, as Richard Purcell - aka Brother Richard from the Cistercian monastery in Roscrea - points out, the socialising coin does have another side. "The youth choir is terrific for musical contacts," he says.

"Down in Roscrea we've just recorded a CD of plainchant and music from the various offices, and I've met so many people through the choir who've been able to help with the organising of that."

Louis Lovett, an actor based in Cork, joined when he was 17. This is the first time he has come back since - and it is, he says, as if he had never been away. "What impressed me, that first time, was the age range of the people in the choir," he says. "The oldest were maybe 29 and, you know, when you're 17, they seemed like granddads." He smiles an enigmatic smile. "Ten years later I'm one of the granddads myself . . ."

This year's grouping of the Irish Youth Choir is unusual in that members from previous years have been invited back to join in the 21st anniversary celebrations, along with the usual crop of first-timers. Among the latter are Deirdre Long from Waterford, Aoife Miskelly from Belfast and Denise Cassidy from Cavan, who confess to being slightly dazed by the scale of the whole thing.

"I've never stayed in a hostel before, either," says Denise Cassidy. "But having four people in the room is good crack."

Veronica Whitehead and Paula O'Reilly are representing the Shanaghan family, being two of four sisters who all sang together in the choir's third year.

Veronica joined the choir in its first year. "I remember the very first rehearsal," she says. "Being stunned by the great wall of sound and thinking: 'Singing in a choir is always going to be like this.' But it isn't." Paula also remembers her first year. "I ended up sitting on the steps of the National Concert Hall, crying with the sheer emotion of it all."

Are conductors affected by emotion as well? "Oh, very much so," says the IYC's conductor Geoffrey Spratt, who dreamed up both the choir and its companion programme of summer workshops for choral conductors shortly after arriving at University College, Cork.

He can still recall the choir's début concert, a performance of Kodály's Missa Brevis at St Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork. "Kodály asks for a semi-chorus of ladies to be slightly separate from the choir, and writes the most rem- arkable music for it. Extraordinarily high. We just had the right ladies to do it - and there was my 'tingle factor' in the first concert. I still remember my eyes welling up and my hair standing on end."

This year's celebratory programme will, he promises, be another hair-raising one. It consists of a specially commissioned overture by the Cork composer, Séamas de Barra - "a virtuoso 10-minute orchestral piece with magic contributions from the choir" - a new setting of Jubilate Deo by long-term IYC member Ciarán Tackney, whose Gloria was also performed by the choir in 1997, and two pieces by Aloys Fleischmann, Song of the Provinces and Clare's Dragoons.

"In any other country with a choral tradition like Ireland has, this visionary piece from the 1940s would be the sort of work that would be trundled out at the equivalent of the Proms in London, year after year after year," he says of Clare's Dragoons. "It has such an amazing welling up of nationalistic sentiment."

The piece begins with the war-pipes playing off-stage; at its climax, a ceremonially garbed piper marches through the hall and joins the orchestra. It's a demanding programme for an amateur choir - and that, says conductor Geoffrey Spratt, is precisely the point.

"It's an intensive time. They're under pressure - but it's the right sort of pressure. They're all incredibly conscious of the privilege of getting to sing with the National Symphony Orchestra, for example. We've always wanted to give them a challenge. It's important for each and every one of our singers to realise that good amateurism is not enough. Muddling along and saying, 'Well, by amateur standards we're good' is not on the agenda at all."

The dual theme of enjoyment and the pursuit of excellence is stressed over and over again by the singers themselves. Gerard O'Brien, from Thurles, who joined the IYC in 1991, puts it bluntly. "This ruins it for other choirs," he says. "You make great friends out of it as well, but it's the quality of the musical work that makes it special."

Does one year stand out particularly in his mind? "The Bach B Minor Mass was absolutely mind-blowing. We did it with baroque instruments at St Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny. The acoustic there is awesome and it all just worked, somehow. The dynamic is different every year, though - I suppose because different music creates a different dynamic. But Geoffrey has a great capacity to make all the music relevant, especially to younger people. And that's not easy - there's a perception that classical music is stuffy."

GERARD was born with one arm and no legs due to the effects of the drug Thalidomide, which means he can't hold a score himself. "I peer in over somebody's shoulder," he says, with the sort of wicked grin which suggests that sharing a score with Gerard is something of an adventure.

Emmet Jackson and Robert Ross, meanwhile, have just had an adventure of their own - three months of travelling in exotic places: Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Tahiti. Which was the best? "New Zealand," they chorus, in impressive unison. So devoted are they to the IYC that they timed their trip to fit.

"We really wanted to go away - but we reallywanted to do this too," says Robert, who gives up a week of his holiday time every summer in order to take part in the IYC performance.

"There comes a point, of course," says Emmet, "when you really feel you shouldn't be doing it any more. Every year I say this is definitely going to be my last year - but every year I just can't resist it. Every year there's something different. Last year we recorded a CD of contemporary religious music in Valentia; fabulous weather, a small place, a really intense experience."

"Yeah, and next year is Carmina Burana in Limerick, so we can't miss that," says Robert, who began singing as a boy chorister at St Mary's Cathedral in that very city. "But next year is definitely going to be our last year . . ."

The Irish Youth Choir, with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Spratt, will perform at the NCH on Friday, June 28th. Soloists include Andrew Murphy (baritone) and Kieran Murphy (war-pipes)