Colm Wilkinson isn’t singing his own praises after recently wrapping up three decades of starring in the biggest Broadway and West End productions of our time – but the truth is, he really should be.
The legendary Dublin singer has been doing what he loves best for the last few years – performing before millions in London, New York, Toronto, Shanghai and his home town of Dublin.
He made the role of Jean Valjean his own in the smash hit highly-acclaimed musical Les Miserables.
And he then went on to taste the same level of success in the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera.
However, after all these years of performing in marathon runs of major hit musicals – often on stage a whopping eight shows a week – Wilkinson has ditched the world of theatre and embarked on a new phase of his career.
And the result is his new album – Some of My Best Friends Are Songs – a deeply personal collection of musical landmarks from his life.
The eclectic collection of songs old and new is dedicated to “the ma and the da” – the parents who raised Colm and his nine siblings in a house in Drimnaugh, Dublin.
And the album includes a version of his family’s favorite song – Red Sails in the Sunset – but he has added a little bit of a soul spin to it.
“It was mutually the song that my da was playing on the piano where he first met my mother. I wanted to include it for that reason, as a sort of dedication to my parents,” Colm explains.
HE tells of how he was surrounded by music from an early age and how the Wilkinson family were always singing and performing whenever the mood took them.
“It was the pre-television days and everybody was expected to contribute to the entertainment on nights that we had friends and neighbors around,” he says.
“We all sang or performed in one way or another – and when the ten of us got going – it was some racket!”
Colm started performing professionally at a very young age and made his first trip abroad to perform with a showband – when he was 16.
“I was sixteen years of age and we flew into New York, it was my first time out of Dublin and my first time on a plane – talk about culture shock,” Colm remembers.
Colm and a young Dublin guitarist called Louis Steward – now one of our foremost jazz musicians – managed to get into the famous Birdland jazz venue and see their hero Stan Getz play live.
“For a 16 year old coming straight out of Dublin in 1960 – it was something else,” he admits.
Colm then returned to Ireland and had a successful career here on the cabaret circuit – which culminated with him representing Ireland in the 1978 Eurovision Song Contest with a song called Born to Sing.
By the time he had already played the role of Judas Iscariot in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar in Dublin and London.
But it was to be his long-running association with Les Miserables in the 80s that would make him an international star.
Now Colm is downsizing, focusing on the songs that have meant alot to him personally down through the years – and is planning to return to live performing once again.
He plans to play Vicar Street in Dublin in the New Year along with gigs elsewhere in the country.
It’s obvious that he is relishing the change to perform without a giant stage set or a cast of thousands getting in the way of his passion.
“It will be great to just get back to me and a band or me and a guitar,” he says.
“Yes, this is a very personal project for me – but I also have to entertain people – there is no point in me just getting up on stage and doing it for myself.”
“Hopefully, it will be about sharing songs with people that mean a lot to me and making the connection,” he adds.
The Album includes a track that was written for him by his son Aaron. The Wilkinson family have been living in Toronto, Canada for some years now and Colm admits that he cannot see himself moving back to his native Dublin in the short term at least.
“It’s great to get back here but we are happy in Toronto, it’s a good life – and the traffic moves!” he laughs.
Colm Wilkinson’s album Some of My Best Friends Are Songs is in shops now.
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