• Tempered Contemporary Music Weekend

    November 17, 2015 - By 

    Whilst funding for the arts on these shores seems to be doing a gradual disappearing act, the arts themselves are as vibrant as never before. This is perhaps especially true in the sphere of Irish contemporary music, as Moving On Music’s weekend series of concerts, Tempered, amply demonstrates. There’s plenty of rock, pop and New-Trad (think The Gloaming) – that could be described as contemporary, but as a marketing label, it’s like a standard raised in a gale that proudly proclaims ‘cutting edge’ or ‘avant garde’. Crash Ensemble, whose ‘Born in The Eighties’ program opens the mini-festival on Thursday in…

  • Sharon Shannon @ Empire Music Hall, Belfast

    October 19, 2015 - By 

    It’s a full house in Belfast’s The Empire Music Hall for button accordionist Sharon Shannon – one of the standout concerts of this year’s Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival. Only the week before in Chicago the Clare musician received the iBAM! (Irish Books Arts & Music) award for her outstanding contribution to music – a merited accolade for a musician who has carved out a highly successful international career on an instrument whose usual habitat is the pub session. Shannon follows a long line of notable Irish accordionists from Joe Burke and Joe Cooley to Tony MacMahon and Seamus…

  • Historical Documents of the Irish Avant Garde

    September 2, 2015 - By 

    Did a radical pianist in 1950s Dublin really inspire Jean Michelle Jarre’s landmark recording Oxygene? What drove the “strange feckless sound without apparent order” of the Keening Women’s Alliance – an improvising vocal group – in late 1950s Cork? What did one woman’s experiments on the Blasket Islands on the sounds of the wind and sea reveal about the Irish language? Could bees have inspired church-organ drone music in early twentieth century Leitrim? Who was behind rural, multi-media trance sessions in the late 1940s, and who on earth went to them?  What did free improvisation have to do with British…

  • The Stray Birds @ Black Box, Belfast

    August 25, 2015 - By 

    Perhaps it’s the current trend for all banjo, fiddle and beard-wielding Americana bands, or maybe its promotor Moving On Music’s reputation as a purveyor of musical excellence that’s pulled them in, but whatever the reason it’s a full house in the Black Box for Pennsylvanian bluegrass trio The Stray Birds. Maya de Virtry, Oliver Craven and Charlie Muench played this same room just over a year ago though tonight, judging by the paltry show of hands in response to Craven’s “who was here last time?” survey,  it seems like a new audience is here to catch one of the hottest…

  • Jack MacGowran Remembered @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 20, 2015 - By 

    Though he died over forty years ago actor Jack MacGowran is still a regular on TV and at international film festivals, having graced such timeless classics such as The Quiet Man, Tom Jones, Doctor Zhivago, Cul-de-Sac and The Exorcist. As a theatre actor MacGowran is best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.  In a revealing talk at Enniskillen’s Southwest College, three people closely connected with MacGowran shed light on his career, his craft and his collaborative relationship with the Nobel Prize-winning writer Beckett. Jack’s daughter, actress Tara MacGowran was joined by Garech Browne, co-founder of Claddagh Records, who had…

  • The Missing Hancocks @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 19, 2015 - By 

    It seems odd to have Hancock’s Half Hour at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival, a thirteen-day smorgasbord of all things Samuel Beckett-related. Even a cricket match – a sport Beckett adored – between The Theatrical Cavaliers Cricket Club and the long-wandering Gaities Cricket Club seemed a more logical inclusion in the festival program. Still, comedy has always been a significant feature of the Happy Days festival, with today’s finest stand-up comedians bringing levity to the program. This comedy element reminds us that much of Beckett’s writing is laced with wicked humour, a fact that is often overlooked. So,…

  • Phaedra @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    The Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival’s tentacles are spreading ever further throughout Fermanagh. It’s a reach matched by its artistic ambitions, with ever more imaginative site-specific venues and events to match. The Necarne Equestrian Centre in Irvinestown’s abandoned Necarne Castle is a dramatic enough setting – an almost gladiatorial arena – but nothing quite prepares you for the sight that greets you as you enter the dark chasm of its interior. The twenty one musicians of the Ulster Orchestra in wide circle formation is impressive in itself but right in the centre is the towering figure, some ten metres…

  • Ohio Impromptu @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 14, 2015 - By 

    The legend on the sign reads ‘The Captain’s Word is Law’ and so it is on the boat ferrying a group of Beckettphiles to Devenish Island for a sunset performance of Ohio Impromptu. When it comes to Samuel Beckett’s plays, however, even beyond the grave Beckett remains very much the captain, with his estate watching closely for any interference with the meaning or spirit of the work. However, as director Adrian Dunbar demonstrated last year with Catastrophe – his striking directorial debut of Beckett – following Beckett’s guidelines is the surest way to success. “If you start fiddling around with…

  • All That Fall @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 10, 2015 - By 

    How do you stage Samuel Beckett’s radio play All That Fall in a festival setting when Beckett was, for the most part, dead against theatrical interpretations of it? Though there had been stage translations authorized by Beckett, notably by Deryk Mendel in Berlin in 1966 and by Christopher Hampton in Calgary in 1967, the writer seemed to regret such translations and would later say no both to Ingmar Bergman and Laurence Olivier’s requests. When Director Max Stafford-Clark – former Director of the Royal Court Theatre, London – approached the Beckett estate about realizing All That Fall he was asked what…

  • Waiting For Godot: Berliner Ensemble @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    August 6, 2015 - By 

    Almost sixty years to the day since Waiting for Godot’s English language premier in London, which then prompted The Observer’s Kenneth Tynan to write that it “jettisons everything by which we know the theatre”, Samuel Beckett’s most famous play still has the capacity to delight, provoke and confound in equal measure. Yet from the off, there is something a little unusual about this production of Waiting for Godot by the legendary Berliner Ensemble. Stage left, removed from the performance space but conspicuous is a small table and chair. On the right, an old, rather regal looking armchair. Above the theatre’s…