Zandra (Josephine Alexandra) Mitchell / First professional female saxophonist

1903-1995

Zandra (Josephine Alexandra) Mitchell was the first professional female saxophonist in Ireland. Born in 1903 in Phibsborough, into a very musical family, she was surrounded by music from birth. From a very young age, Zandra learned to play a wide range of instruments, including the violin, the cello and later the saxophone. She became an excellent sight-reader, playing in bands accompanying the films at the Rotunda Cinema.

When Zandra went to London with her brother, Eddie, to play sax with his band, she was spotted by an agent, who invited her on a tour of Switzerland with a jazz band. Zandra accepted the invitation and went on tour - against the wishes of her parents, who threatened to disown her. She traveled for years with many different jazz bands - including her own ‘Baby Mitchell’s Queens of Jazz’ - and during her career played with some of the greatest jazz musicians of the twentieth century, including Django Reinhardt and Coleman Hawkins.

Zandra eventually settled in Berlin and was one of only very few Irish citizens living there during World War II. She witnessed Hitler’s rise to power from an incredibly dangerous perspective. Jazz was seen as ‘degenerate art’ and a threat to the Nazis’ control, so to be a jazz musician in that place and time was a huge risk. According to friends who knew her in later life, Zandra witnessed Kristallnacht on her way home from a gig, arrived at her jazz club to find it had been bombed, stowed away aboard a Nazi troop train... so many stories!

When she finally came back to Ireland in the late 1940’s, she continued to play music but it seems she struggled to adjust to life after Berlin. People often did not believe her when she told them stories of her past. She spent the later years of her life living in her family’s holiday home in Rossnowlagh, County Donegal. Her brother, Eddie, visited often and the two remained close. Zandra also had a very dear friend called Michael in Rossnowlagh, who helped her as she grew older and shared her love of music and dogs. Zandra died in 1995 and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetary.

A radio documentary, ‘A Sentimental Journey’ was made about Zandra’s life in 2015, directed by Marc McMenamin for Lyric FM.

In November 2019, a play based on her story, ‘Zandra, Queen of Jazz’ by Roseanne Lynch and Darn Skippy Productions, premieres at Smock Alley Boys’ School Theatre. For tickets and more info see: https://smockalley.com/zandra-queen-of-jazz/

Thanks to Roseanne Lynch for this biography.

MARY PEARSE / Musician, teacher, actress, author

MARY BRIGID PEARSE

Musician, teacher, actress, author

1884-1947

Dublin

Mary Bridget (later changed to Mary Brigid) was born in Dublin on 26th April, 1884 and was the youngest of four children born to James and Margaret Pearse; her siblings were Margaret, Patrick and Willie. She was a musician, teacher, actress and author of short stories, children’s stories, and plays.

From an early age, she showed considerable aptitude for music, particularly the piano. Through her membership of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), she met Owen Lloyd who became her harp teacher. Under Lloyd’s guidance, Mary Brigid progressed quickly on the Irish and concert harps and performed at concerts of An t-Oireachtas with Lloyd's band of harps. She also won several prizes at harp competitions organised by An t-Oireachtas and performed regularly at branch meetings of the Gaelic League in Dublin. In 1910, Mary Brigid succeeded Owen Lloyd as harp teacher at St Enda’s (Scoil Éanna) in Rathfarnham, the bilingual school founded by her brother Patrick.  She also provided piano and voice lessons as part of the extra-curricular activities offered at the school.

Between 1910 and 1912, her literary works, which comprised largely of one-act plays or adaptations of novellas by Charles Dickens, were performed by the Leinster Stage Society at the Abbey Theatre. After the execution of her brothers Patrick and Willie in 1916, Mary Brigid chose to remain out of public and political life. As her mother and sister were increasingly burdened with the legacy of Patrick and Willie, she focused on teaching music and writing at her home in Dublin. Her first novel, The Murphys of Ballystack, was published in 1917.  Although the book was well received, this literary success was short-lived and she struggled to have her work published in the following decades.

During the 1920s and early 1930s Mary Brigid spent much of her time writing short stories, plays, children’s stories and articles. She wrote over twenty short stories and commenced two other novels, Curly and the Persian and The Romance of Castle Bawn. Her best-known literary work is The Home-Life of Pádraig Pearse, published in 1934. The book is essentially a collation of a series of articles which she contributed to the Christian Brothers’ magazine, Our Boys, in 1926 to mark the tenth anniversary of the 1916 Rising. The publication of the book should have been a personal and professional triumph for Mary Brigid, but it coincided with a particularly turbulent period in her life which was marked by the death of her mother in 1932 and a bitter dispute with her sister Margaret over the terms of their mother’s will and Margaret’s appointment as executrix. 

Mary Brigid continued to write and teach harp, piano, cello and mandolin throughout the 1930s and 1940s and participated in several broadcasts about her brother Patrick. She suffered from high blood pressure and neurosis and died, aged sixty-three, on 12 November 1947. The Home-Life was later republished in 1979 to mark the centenary of Patrick Pearse’s birth, but to date her other literary works have not been published.

Many thanks to Teresa and Mary Louise O’Donnell for this herstory. Their book Sisters of the Revolutionaries: The Story of Margaret and Mary Brigid Pearse is available at Irish Academic Press.

ADA REHAN / COMIC ACTRESS

ADA REHAN

Comic actress

Limerick / New York / Rest of the World

1860 – 1916

Ada Rehan was once one of Ireland’s most celebrated actresses, yet she is barely remembered by us today. Born Delia Crehan in Shannon Street, Limerick on April 1860 22nd (or possibly, 1857 according to varying sources), Rehan moved to Brooklyn with her family when she was still a child. A mistake made early in her career by the manager of Arch Street Theater, Philadelphia who billed her as Ada C. Rehan inspired her stage name. She adopted the new name and earned an international reputation as an excellent Shakespearean actress, lauded particularly for her roles in his comedies.

Statuesque, with striking grey-blue eyes and rich brown hair, Rehan’s appeal was much celebrated. According to theatre critic William Winter: “Her physical beauty was of the kind that appears in portraits of women by Romney and Gainsborough—ample, opulent, and bewitching—and it was enriched by the enchantment of superb animal spirits.”

Of course, there was far more to Ada than her looks. Oscar Wilde described her as “that brilliant and fascinating genius.” In 1879, Rehan joined impresario Augustin Daly’s New York based theatre company where she enjoyed leading lady status for twenty years, enjoying enormous success on the stages of America and Europe. For a time, she was considered a worthy rival to the great actress of the time, Sarah Bernhardt.

In 1891, when Wilde was assembling his cast for the first production of Lady Windermere’s Fan, he wrote to Daly requesting that he consider the part of Mrs. Erlynne for Ada, insisting that: “‘I would sooner see her play the part of Mrs. Erlynne than any English-speaking actress we have, or French actress for that matter.” Daly turned him down.

Years later, Wilde, recently released from prison, was negotiating with Daly to write a new play for Rehan. Sadly, Daly died unexpectedly during these negotiations. For Rehan this was as much a personal tragedy as a professional one and she was touched by Wilde’s kindness afterward.

Rehan took over negotiations and agreed to pay Wilde an advance of £100 with the promise of £200 on acceptance in return for ‘a new and original comedy, in three or four acts’. Once he realised that the deadline agreed was wildly optimistic, he offered to return the £100, which he had spent, but he was dead before raising the required sum.

Rehan retired from the stage in 1906, and lived in New York City until her death in 1916. Obituaries were published in the New York Times and the Limerick Chronicle, and she was commemorated two decades later when a US Navy cargo ship was named the USS Ada Rehan.

Thanks to Eleanor Fitzsimons, author of Wilde's Women, for this fabulous biography.

Sources:

Letter to Augustin Daly, August 1897 in The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart Davis (Eds) (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), p.489

W. Graham Robertson. Time Was, the reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945), p.231

Russell Jackson, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Contract for a New Play 1900’ in Theatre Notebook, Volume 50, Number 2 contained in Volumes 50-52 (Society for Theatre Research, 1996), p.113