The Phony Awards: Meet the Judges ...

If Broadway can have its Tony Awards then Mullingar Shamrocks GAA Club can have The Phony Awards and seven coveted awards will be on offer at The Sound of the Musicals on Saturday night

.At the Awards Ceremony the following titles will be presented:

Best Costumes/Visual

Best Chorus Performance

Best Female Performance

Best Male Performance

Outstanding Performance

Best Musical

Highest Grossing Musical.

And we have three esteemed judges to cast their expert eyes over the events taking place on the big stage in The Park Hotel.

HELEN HASSETT - the classical soprano artist

Helen holds a Bachelor of Music (Hons) degree from UCC, a post-graduate diploma in performance from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and a first class honours voice teaching diploma from the Cork School of Music. Helen lectured at UCC in performance and was also Head of Voice at the Cork School of Music for five years before relocating to Mullingar.

Since Helen's first professional solo performance at the tender age of 19 as an undergraduate student, she has maintained her status as one of Ireland's premiere classical sopranos. Her reputation for beauty of tone combined with her innate musicality solidified her reputation as “a musician who communicates brilliantly with her eyes and expressions” (Irish Examiner).

Helen has performed throughout Ireland and Europe and enjoys the honour of performing as soloist with many of Ireland's finest orchestral ensembles, the RTE Concert and Symphony Orchestras, the Dublin Baroque Orchestra, the RTE Vanberg Quartet and the RTE ConTempo Quartet and memorably Helen sang for USA President Barack Obama at The White House. Helen has performances in Vivaldi’s Gloria, Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man, and as soprano soloist in Mendelssohn’s Elijah to her credit as well as several lead operatic roles including Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Galatea in Handel’s Acis and Galatea and Suzanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro.

In parallel with her performance career, Helen is now a much sought after vocal teacher and is proud to have coached many of Ireland's most promising operatic and musical theatre singers. She is also much in demand nationally as a choral clinician and is the soprano vocal coach for The Ulster Youth Choir, The Irish Youth Training Choir and The Irish Youth Choir.

Helen is honoured to be a judge for this year's Mullingar Shamrocks, Sound of the Musicals. Helen's three children all play at underage level for Mullingar Shamrocks and she is a proud founder member of the Mullingar Shamrocks Gaelic4Mothers&Others.

MARK IRWIN-International Singing Star

Mark Irwin has the Mullingar Shamrocks DNA in his veins and was an All-Ireland medal winner in Scór na nÓg in 2006 when he formed a title winning ballad group with Rory Hughes, Jemma McNamee, Aoife Gavin and Katie McCarthy. We tend to forget how good a footballer Mark was and that he played cornerback for Mullingar Shamrocks in 2010. The programme notes for that final recorded that 'Mark broke onto the senior team this year after some outstanding displays for the Under-21s earlier in the season. Has been possibly Shamrocks most consistent defender over the course of the championship and his pace and reading of the game make him out as a star of the future'.

Prophetic words indeed but not in the a manner expected as Mark's star was to shine brightly on the stage and of course continues to shine as we saw last Saturday night in the wonderful concert in the Mullingar Arts Centre.

Mark trained as a classical singer for 9 years with Dervla Conlon and during that time he won the prestigious Tenor solo title at the Féis Ceoil. He then moved to London to study at the London School of Musical Theatre where he was the recipient of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Scholarship. Mark's credits include, The Commitments Musical (West End, London), Marco Polo (The Shaw Theatre, London, The 12 Tenors European Tour, Tenors of Rock, VOXX-The West End Tenors, The 3 Tones, Our Lady Valentine and just recently Mark returned from Florida where he was rehearsing for The Choir of Man before he joins the new Norwegian Encore ship in October for a 6 months residency.

CHRIS CORROON - the AIMS award winner

Chris is an award winning musical theatre performer with over 15 years of experience of performance behind him. He has been involved with many musical societies over the years and was recently a winner of the Best Male Singer award at the AIMS Awards. Not only a talented singer, Chris has been nominated many times in multiple categories which showcased his versatility as an actor as well as a vocalist. Chris is the resident Dame annually with the Helix Panto in Dublin and also will be staring in a new musical set to take to the stage in Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin next month.