• From An Abandoned Work @ Happy Days Beckett Festival

    September 13, 2017 - By 

    For all the grim reality associated with much of Samuel Beckett’s work there is also, frequently enough, a silver lining of humour. This duality is perfectly illustrated in From an Abandoned Work, a prose piece from 1954/5 intended as part of novel that never materialized – hence the title. It took new life as a ‘meditation for radio’ and was first broadcast by the BBC in 1957. Here, it is presented in a secret location as a staged reading, something of an experiment by Director Netia Jones, whose production of Stirrings Still featuring Ian McElhinney proved to be one of…

  • Eh Joe @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    September 7, 2017 - By 

    One of the most satisfying aspects of the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival has been its embrace of Beckett in all his diversity – from his emblematic plays to short dramatic works, poetry, and performances written specifically for radio and television. Eh Joe, Beckett’s first play for television, was written for Jack MacGowaran in 1965, though the version on the big screen in Enniskillen’s Ardhowen Theatre comes from a 1986 adaptation by Director Alan Gilsenan, starring Tom Hickey and Siobhan McKenna (as the Woman’s voice). The stark opening scene sees Joe, a middle-aged man in worn, soiled clothes, sat…

  • Máirtín O’Connor, Cathal Hayden, Garry O’Briain & ConTempo Quartet @ The Ulster Museum

    September 6, 2017 - By 

    The metaphoric symbolism of traditional musicians performing inside a museum wasn’t lost on button accordionist Máirtín O’Connor, fiddler Cathal Hayden and bouzouki player Garry O’Briain. “Someone will put a friggin’ glass case over us – fossils of folk,” quips O’Connor, the former De Danana and Boys of the Lough alumnus, to much laughter. “We’ll sit here for the rest of our days.” In such an unlikely event, the Ulster Museum would be exhibiting the wrong musicians, for despite deep roots in Irish folk music, O’Connor, Hayden and O’Briain have, over the course of forty plus years, embraced all manner of…

  • Dr Kathryn White: ‘Teaching’ Beckett @ Samuel Beckett Happy Days Festival

    September 6, 2017 - By 

    Can we teach Samuel Beckett, or is the process more about simply exposing people to The Nobel Prize-winning author and letting his words work their magic on the individual in highly personal ways? This is the main theme of the introductory talk in the Town Hall at the Happy Days Enniskillen International Beckett Festival by Dr. Kathryn White, Lecturer in English in the School of Arts and Humanities at Ulster University. Yes, Beckett is back in Enniskillen after a gap year in 2016, during which the festival successfully upped sticks to Paris. Sagely rebranded as part of the brand spanking…

  • Holly Macve w/ Alana Henderson @ Studio 1A, Bangor

    August 23, 2017 - By 

    Far beyond providing mere entertainment, a festival has the capacity to animate everyday spaces and nudge people to perhaps see their habitual surroundings in a new light. Now in its fifth year, Open House Festival has brought Bangor’s spaces – small and large, public and private, mundane and magical – to life, via the arts in their broadest possible spectrum. The transformative nature of Open House Festival is evident in the concert of Holly Macve, the first concert held in the century-long history of the former The Good Templar Hall, re-baptized Studio 1A in April 2017, after extensive renovations and…

  • Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh & Cormac Begley @ An Droichead, Belfast

    May 19, 2017 - By 

    There was double reason for celebration at An Droichead – South Belfast’s primary centre of Irish language and culture. Firstly, there had been the launch earlier that day of the Belfast Traditional Music Trail. This initiative, to be held every Saturday afternoon, presents traditional Irish music to all-comers, on a trail that traverses the Cathedral Quarter – taking in some of the city’s most iconic pubs. Then, just a few hours later, a full house at An Droichead welcomed fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh   and concertina player Cormac Begley – two of the finest exponents of their respective instruments in Ireland…

  • April Verch Band @ The Old Courthouse, Antrim

    May 15, 2017 - By 

    Antrim’s The Old Courthouse was a fitting venue for the April Verch Band, which brought its vibrant, fiddle-based Americana to a building that dates to 1776. Fitting because, in a way, fiddler and step dancer Verch was bringing the music home. In the seventeen hundreds over a hundred thousand Irish left home to begin a new life in North America, bringing with them their fiddle music, songs and dance traditions, and these roots — amongst others — were evident during a captivating ninety-minute show. Of course, along with the Ulster-Scotts/Irish came the Scottish, French and Polish — amongst multiple nationalities…

  • Fairport Convention @ Black Box, Belfast

    February 6, 2017 - By 

    Who knows where the time goes? For Fairport Convention, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2017, and for its legion of fans, Sandy Denny’s song and lyric from Fairport Convention’s 1969 album Unhalfbricking has never been more poignant, or indeed, more haunting. Where indeed? Fairport has played just about every town, city and village the length of breadth of mainland UK since its first concert in 1967, but jaunts to this part of the world have been fairly rare, with this being Fairport’s first Belfast gig since 2010. All the more reason then for celebration. Fittingly, this afternoon’s matinee gig and…

  • Don Giovanni @ Grand Opera House, Belfast

    November 22, 2016 - By 

    Beethoven branded Don Giovanni as frivolous, but as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote in a letter to his father in 1781: ‘For do you really suppose that I should write an opera-comique the same way as an opera-seria?’ For Mozart, Don Giovanni was an opera-buffa, though the much darker tones that underlie the comedic shenanigans make this an oddly complex psychological opera. This Northern Ireland Opera production wholeheartedly embraces the playfulness of Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto. And, with a Titanic-esque luxury liner providing the setting for the unfolding action, complete with icebergs in the distance, it’s hard not to imagine that…

  • Football As Never Before @ The Strand Arts Centre, Belfast

    November 8, 2016 - By 

    A ninety-minute avant garde documentary about George Best, set to live music and performed in an art deco cinema, might sound like something from the 1970s alternative arts scene, particularly when only one of the footballing superstar’s goals is featured.  But this is Belfast in 2016 and the catalyst for this future-retro Best tribute is Dublin composer/musician Matthew Nolan, who specializes in putting music to silent/avant-garde films. The film in question is “Football Like Never Before”, shot by German film-maker Helmuth Costard in 1970 and released the following year. Eight 16mm cameras tracked Best for the full ninety minutes of…