Join us for the 56th Annual Irish Coffee Benefit, Saturday, March 11, 2023, Augustana Lutheran Church.

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Check back for more information.

In the meantime, enjoy the highlights from the winners of one of our recent auction items: a private tour of the Paul Sereno Fossil Lab at the University of Chicago.

We welcome donations to help support the children and families at UChicago Comer Children’s Hospital

Special Live Entertainment at the
2022 In-Person Irish Coffee Benefit

Clara Takarabe has been substitute violist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 24 years. She is also the co-director of the Northwestern Music and Medicine Program at the Department of Neurology, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. As part of her research on clinical music interventions for anxiety and agitation, Clara has also performed at Northwestern Medicine Lurie Children's Hospital.

In honor of the Irish Coffee Benefit, tenor Matthew Dean and pianist Karl Fogel playfully engage with traditional Irish tunes and the music of John Ireland and contemporaries on themes of sacred and secular love and the dawn of Spring.

Matthew Dean is a versatile tenor regarded for his “ringing sound, cantorial fluency, and elegance” in ensembles nationwide. At the landmark Rockefeller Chapel, John von Rhein praised his “firm vocalism and beautiful timbre” for Bach with the Haymarket Opera Orchestra. Dean manages Chicago's Schola Antiqua, recording on Naxos and for medieval museum galleries internationally. His Sounds of Faith program developed for The Met Cloisters has been heralded in The New Yorker and Commonweal Magazine. He regularly appears with the Newberry Consort and Bella Voce, and coaches ensembles including the South Dakota Chorale on Russian and undergraduate and graduate training as a medievalist from The University of Chicago (www.matthew-dean.com). He lives in Oak Park with wife Katie and children Erik and Elanor.

Karl Fogel is a long-time Hyde Parker whose Baldwin baby grand piano has lived at several addresses on Kimbark Avenue alone. He
began studying piano at the age of fifteen and quickly developed a love for  accompanying singers. He has been the pianist for the University of Chicago Latke-Hamentash Debate every year since 1997
except, alas, for the two (so far) pandemic years in which the debate has not been held in person. He sings bass in the Russian choir Golosa (of which Matt Dean is a founding member), and takes piano lessons with Svetlana Belsky.