The production included a narration, Beware of False Prophets, which was written by Frank McGuinness and performed by Aidan Quinn.
It felt Messiah XXI will capture much of the excitement and anticipation the Millennium is generating while at the same time being an entirely appropriate modern day celebration of the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ.
The production was a labor of love for the three producers, McNamara, Kearns and Bennett, who between them personally contributed a substantial portion of the budget.
By re-interpreting the music in a modern idiom, with popular artists, this new version will, in our view, be immediately accessible to a much wider audience.
It will allow the nation at large to discover and enjoy an important part of our musical heritage, which will stand forever on audio and visual media as a reminder of our marking of the Millennium in Ireland.
We are delighted too with the encouragement we have received from all the churches as this will be an ecumenical and cross-border event, with a huge choir being drawn from both territories on the island.
In addition to being broadcast during Ireland's Millennium TV schedule, the show has been shown on PBS stations throughout the United States.
I have lost a lot of the repetition that was in the original because in today's MTV world of the 10 second audience attention span it simply didn't hold up.
Probably the most noticeable change is that I have added a rhythm section, what one of the event's producers John Kearns refers to as the rock'n'soul element of the piece, and there are electric guitars involved!
This was one of the reasons the Committee decided to give the grant and felt that a profit would be made for years to come as the show was being televised all over the world.