17 August 2008 - Kilkenny Arts Festival

Transcription

17 August 2008 - Kilkenny Arts Festival
Kilkenny Arts Festival
8 - 17 August 2008
www.kilkennyarts.ie
Tel +353 56 775 2175
contents w 01
WELCOME TO OUR 35th FESTIVAL, 10 DAYS OF ENCHANTING ARTISTIC DELIGHTS
FOR ALL! FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON ALL EVENTS, PLEASE DROP INTO OUR
BOX OFFICE, LOCATED THIS YEAR AT THE ST FRANCIS ABBEY BREWERY,
PARLIAMENT STREET (OPPOSITE ROTHE HOUSE).
Kilkenny Arts Festival Box Office
Tel +353 (0)56 775 2175
www.kilkennyarts.ie
Email info@kilkennyarts.ie
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Emer Foley (chair), Fergus Cronin, Susan Proud, Maureen Kennelly,
Anna O’Sullivan, Conor Langton, Thomas O’Toole, Michael O’Toole,
Isabell Smyth, Orla Kelly, Gobnait Kearney, Sean McKeown
Festival Team
Chief Executive Damian Downes
Marketing Director Brendan Rice
Administrator Áine Dennehy
Programme Editor & Publicity Co-ordinator Maeve Butler
Programme Co-ordinator Jacqui Dempsey
Production Manager Michael Burke
Technical Consultant Eamonn Fox
Assistant Production Manager Orla Burke
Marketing Assistant Fabien Tiratay
Public Relations Kate Bowe PR
Volunteer Co-ordinator Niamh Duffe
Friends Co-ordinator Hazel Williams
Artist Liaison Consultant Jane Russell
Box Office Team Tracy Power (Manager)
Lilian Burke, Nicola Younge, Davy Holland, Brian Butler
Graphic Design A&D
Web Design Pixel Design
IT Support Tectrix
Web Maintenance Spot On
Festival Image Alé Mercado
Programmers
Street Kilkenny Arts Festival Team
Theatre/Dance Tom Creed
Classical Music Susan Proud & The Dresden Group
Music Gerry Godley
Wired 3epkano
Literature Colm Tóibín
Visual Art Hugh Mulholland
Children’s Events Emer McGowan
Thanks to our amazing team of volunteers,
especially all our regulars - we could not do
this without you.
Thank you to all our sponsors and friends your generosity makes this happen.
To our programmers and artists –
your passion and commitment inspires us.
To everyone who gets involved –
thank you.
Special thanks to Íde Deloughry, Karen Hanratty, Caroline Coode,
Mary Butler, Niamh Finn, Ger Cody, Peggy Murray, Shay Gilbert,
The Dean, Chapter & Staff of St Canice’s Cathedral, Róisín
McQuillan, Sharon O’Gorman, Mary Heffernan, Anne Teehan,
Frank Kavanagh, Ground Staff at Kilkenny Castle, Sally
O’Halloran, Fr Louis Hughes, Willie Meighan, Fr Oliver Maher,
Donie Butler, Philip Edmondson, The Civil Defence, Andy
McEneff, Gabrielle Hickey, Sandra McGrath, Bek Patterson, Denis
O’Reilly, IMC Cinema Group, Anthony Hogan, Johnny Holden,
John Cleere, Eamon Walshe, John McNena, Margaret Coughlan,
Noel Lane, Michael Lynch, Mick McAteer, Eddie Langton, Áine
Comerford, Elaine Brennan, Maria Comerford, Esther Mullins,
Alison McGrath, Alan Ragget, Lindsay Perry, Fr Richard Scriven,
Fiona Flood and the girls, Mary Kearney, Donal Gibbons, Jon
Hegarty, Oxfam Ireland, Louise Allen, Alva Pearson, Elaine Scott,
The Gourmet Store, Fintan Blake Kelly, Geraldine Tierney, Anne
O’Connor, Sunniva O’Flynn, Bob Quinn, Brian Tyrrell, Tony Walsh,
Joe Crockett, Denis Carr, Sgt Gary Gordon, Isabelle Etienne, Rolf
Stehle, Paul Ashe-Browne, John Purcell, Sarah Quinlan, Una
McCarthy, Imelda Rey, Fergus Shiel, Jim Fogarty, Superintendent
Walter O’Sullivan, Camphill Communities, Irish Baroque
Orchestra, Ken Maguire, James Alderman, Una Molloy.
Street Spectacle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Theatre/Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Classical Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Wired . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Meet the Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Day-by-Day: Main Programme . . . . . . . .
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Day-by-Day: Children’s Events . . . . . . . . .
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Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Visual Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Children’s Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Kilkenny Arts Festival Friends . . . . . . . . .
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Booking Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Sponsors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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SYMBOLS GUIDE
Wheelchair
Accessible
Not
Wheelchair
Accessible
Parking
Available
Limited
Parking
Available
No
Parking
Available
Please turn off your mobile
phone during performances
02 w street
MacDONAGH JUNCTION &
KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENT
Big Beat (UK)
Producing incredible sounds on a multicoloured array of recycled junk, Big Beat
are the most innovative band to ever
leap out of a pile of rubbish! Toddlers to
seniors: come and surrender to their
infectious beats!
Saturday 9 August
9.15pm
Hélios makes his way through
the streets of Kilkenny, with
Finale at Kilkenny Castle.
KILKENNY LOCAL AUTHORITIES &
KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENT
Please note that this is an
outdoor event. Please bring
warm clothes/rain wear.
All children under 12 yrs must
be accompanied by an adult
at all times.
ROUTE OF HÉLIOS II
Dean St, Irishtown,
Parliament St, High St,
The Parade,
Kilkenny Castle
La Compagnie Malabar
(FRANCE)
Hélios II
A giant creature, Hélios, comes to the city to tell the story of the birth of the
sun. Strange immortals, worshippers of the sun, builders of light, accompany this
golden insect, all the while putting to flight the dark, the silence and the empty
night. Swaying rhythmically through the streets, Hélios makes his way towards
the most striking backdrop imaginable. At the stunning setting of Kilkenny
Castle, using all the glory of his stature to bring his tale to the world, he evokes
the construction of the sun, born – according to legend – of an egg created from
chaos. As the story reaches its finale, at the dawn of a thousand setting suns,
an explosion of light exposes the limits of the night in a supernatural blaze.
La Compagnie Malabar, world leaders in circus and street
theatre, has been creating monuments of awe, pleasure
and emotion, capturing the hearts and minds of citizens
the world over, for 27 years. Come see them ignite
Kilkenny Arts Festival 2008 with this
thrilling spectacle.
What a fantastic way to open the festival!
The Sneakers (UK)
If singing and dancing in the street is your
thing, come and join The Sneakers, with
their foot-stomping rock ‘n’ roll, cleverly
crafted comedy routines and wonderful
sense of fun. Great for all ages.
Invisible Men (UK)
A huge hit in Kilkenny in 2002, the
Invisible Men are back for more playful
assaults and loony-tune style hijacks.
“Unique and very, very funny….
Breathtakingly refreshing street theatre…
Intelligent, original and utterly mad”
(The Guardian)
Physical Jerks (UK)
Captivating crowds with their exciting style
and physical dexterity, Physical Jerks bring
bboying (breakdancing) to a new level with
jaw-dropping acrobatics and dance routines.
street w 03
BIG BEAT
Saturday 9 August
12.30pm, 2.30pm & 4.30pm
MacDonagh Junction
THE SNEAKERS
Sunday 10 August
12.30pm: MacDonagh Junction
2.30pm: At Winstons,
Parliament Street
4.00pm: At Byrne’s Bookshop,
High Street
INVISIBLE MEN
Sunday 10 August
2.30pm: MacDonagh Junction
4.00pm: At Winstons,
Parliament Street
PHYSICAL JERKS
Friday 15 August
12.30pm & 2.30pm
MacDonagh Junction
4.30pm: Kilkenny Castle
04 w street
MacDONAGH JUNCTION &
KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENT
Entanglement Witness
An interactive installation
MUSICAL RUTH
Saturday 16 August
12.30pm: Kilkenny Castle
2.30pm: MacDonagh Junction
4.30pm: Streets of Kilkenny
CIRQUE BIJOU
Sunday 17 August
12.30pm: MacDonagh Junction
2.30pm: Kilkenny Castle
4.30pm: Streets of Kilkenny
ANTOINETTE CHAUDRON
IRISH PREMIÈRE
BALADEU’X
Saturday 16 August
12.30pm: MacDonagh Junction
5.00pm: Kilkenny Castle
Baladeu’x (BELGIUM)
A charming performance of music,
movement and juggling by one of
Belgium’s finest street theatre companies.
Deceptively clever, their Bal à Balles
Musette is a gently humorous, creative
and tender show to delight all ages.
Musical Ruth (UK)
Have you been practising your hymns?
Musical Ruth will help you! Watch out for
this madcap, hilarious nun zooming around
Kilkenny on her motorised piano. Once
experienced, never forgotten!
ENTANGLEMENT WITNESS
Immersing the audience/participant in
an evolving atmosphere of light and
sound, Entanglement Witness is a
responsive environment, a transitional
space between the real and the virtual world. Moving through the environment,
participants actively engage with their own transformed image while interacting
with an avatar that exists in a parallel world of light.
Tobacco Factory Theatre (UK/IRELAND)
Mimic
Written, composed and performed
by Raymond Scannell
Directed and designed by Tom Creed
Julian Neary, a comedian, returns to the Ireland he
rebelled against as a child and finds a landscape of
abandoned houses and ruined shopping centres.
Cirque Bijou (UK)
A unique dystopian one-man tour-de-force at a
piano, about what might happen to a nation that
forgets its heritage.
With the beautiful Helter Skelter characters
in dazzling costumes and beautifully
choreographed movement, Cirque Bijou
bring splashes of colour and joy to Kilkenny.
Bread & Butter
Theatre
Company (UK)
Armed with trunks, goggles, armbands
and verruca cream, the “Van Dunk
Brothers” will thrill you with their awardwinning dry land synchronised swimming
display. Hard-working, friendly and multitalented, they’ll win you over in no time!
Saturday 9 - Sunday 17 August
2pm-6pm
The Maltings, Tilbury Place
Admission free
The audience is free to come & go
throughout the installation
Artists in conversation Sat 9th, 6pm
Cindy Cummings is a freelance dance artist and a member of Aosdána.
Todd Winkler is a professor of music at Brown University.
MIMIC
Sunday 10 - Monday 11 August
6pm
The Watergate Theatre
Admission €20/€18
Duration 80 mins approx
Post-show discussion Sun 10th
“Scannell shows the seeds of
being a great Irish writer”
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
Priscilla Robinson
BREAD & BUTTER
THEATRE COMPANY
Sunday 17 August
12.30pm: Kilkenny Castle
2.30pm: MacDonagh Junction
4.30pm: Walkabout
(Kieran St, High St)
theatre/ w 05
dance
Cindy Cummings & Todd Winkler (IRELAND/US)
(IRELAND)
KuddelMuddel
In this old-fashioned comedy slide show,
Priscilla engagingly tackles themes of stress,
therapy and growing up a Baptist in 1970s’ Ireland. Speeding through such
diverse topics as finding gifts in skips and her granny’s concept of the “axis
of evil”, the show ends with a live de-cluttering, as Priscilla attempts to
auction off some of her personal belongings. Refreshments will be served.
Kuddelmuddel: a German word meaning muddle, mess, confusion or hotch-potch.
KUDDELMUDDEL
Friday 15 - Sunday 17 August
6pm
Oxfam Ireland, High St
Admission €12
Duration 90 mins approx
“original & highly
entertaining… quirky…
razor-sharp observation”
HOT PRESS
Ouroboros
(IRELAND)
theatre w 07
DYLAN VAUGHAN
06 w theatre
Translations
By Brian Friel
Sunday 10 - Tuesday 12 August
8pm
The Great Hall,
Hall
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €25/€22
With John Olohan, Brendan Conroy, Charlie Bonner, Owen McDonnell,
Kate Brennan, Janet Moran, Tara Lynne O’Neill, Conan Sweeney,
Chris Moran and Rod Goodall.
Widely regarded as Brian Friel’s theatrical masterpiece, Translations has
compelled audiences the world over to consider the fundamental nature
of language, its connection to culture and its relationship to power.
Set in rural Ireland in 1833, the play explores the impact on local
characters struggling to adjust to the shifting dynamics of the world
around them, manifested by the imposition of the English language
and the mapping and translating of Gaelic place names into English by
the ruling British. In this “haunting
but hugely rewarding play” (New
York Times), Ireland’s greatest living
dramatist creates a world in which
language becomes conscious of itself
as it battles to represent and shape
the differing cultures it encounters.
FOR OUROBOROS’
PRODUCTION OF BRIAN
FRIEL’S MAKING HISTORY:
“lucid and energetic…
quite stunning”
VANESSA BYRNE
THE IRISH TIMES
Wednesday 13 August (preview)
6pm
Admission €15
Directed by Denis Conway and Andrew Flynn
Costume Design by Sinéad Cuthbert
The ancient alchemical symbol of
the Ouroboros signifies ideas of
perfection and totality, of birth,
death and renewal. This powerful
metaphor is at the heart of this
young, innovative company, which
seeks to produce works of an
epic, ephemeral nature: never
fixed, changing from night to
night, making theatre which
is alive, intensely felt and
illuminating.
Gare St Lazare
Players (IRELAND)
The End
By Samuel Beckett
WORLD PREMIÈRE
Thursday 14, Friday 15 August
6pm
Saturday 16 August
3pm
The Parade Tower
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €20/€18
Duration 1 hr approx
Post-show discussion Fri 15th
Featuring Conor Lovett
Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett
“Disarming and startling”
THE IRISH TIMES
The End is a novella written around the same time as Beckett's First
Love and Molloy. The narrator recalls a period late in his life when,
having been expelled from an institution of some kind, he returns to
Dublin. His encounters and his efforts to find refuge only leave him
feeling ‘at sea’ and he finds the city simultaneously familiar and strange.
As it is estranged, so is the narrative. Distinctions between what occurs
and what is imagined become impossible to determine.
“One could hardly come up
with a better human
instrument to intone the
sonorous waves of Samuel
Beckett’s blasphemous comic
prose than Conor Lovett”
Gare St Lazare Players, one of Ireland’s leading theatre companies,
are renowned and highly-regarded for their innovative and compelling
presentations of Samuel Beckett’s prose. This is the company's fifth
premiere at Kilkenny Arts Festival and they continue to tour Ireland
and internationally to great acclaim.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
The text was written intended to be read and is recited here, in its
entirety, with the kind permission of The Samuel Beckett Estate.
08 w theatre
“You cannot stay above the
fight… When people are being
kidnapped and killed, then
you have to take action to
change things in your country”
NATALIA KOLIADA, CO-FOUNDER
“These are people who are free
in their minds, who are free to
decide by themselves what to
write and what to present”
TOM STOPPARD
“Talk loudly, openly and
honestly… It’s the only
way to stop dictatorship”
VACLAV HAVEL
Friday 15 August
8pm
The Watergate Theatre
Admission €22/€20
Duration 1hr 30mins
In Russian with English surtitles
Post-show discussion
Belarus Free Theatre
Being Harold Pinter
(BELARUS)
Directed by Vladimir Scherban
Kilkenny Arts Festival is delighted to present the work of Belarus Free Theatre
in Ireland for the first time. The company was established in 2005 in response
to the repressive regime in the former Soviet state.* Banned in their home
country but determined to speak out about the situation in “Europe’s last
dictatorship”, the current activities of Belarus Free Theatre include producing
underground performances of work by banned Belarussian playwrights and
European and American writers, translating and publishing contemporary
Belarussian plays and organising master-classes and public readings. They are
supported by leading international figures such as Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter,
Tom Stoppard and Mick Jagger. Among Belarussian playwrights, directors and
actors, the Belarus Free Theatre represents the main hope for change in their
country.
*All theatre in Belarus is state-owned and strictly controlled. Plays and
playwrights critical of modern-day Belarus are banned, forcing those
determined to exercise freedom of speech underground, rehearsing and
performing in secret locations, audience members calling an anonymous
telephone number to establish the venue. Co-founder of Belarus Free Theatre,
Nikolai Khalezin, has been arrested many times and imprisoned for organising
civil resistance actions.
Generation
Jeans
THE GUARDIAN
Written by Nikolai Khalezin
with the participation of
Natalia Koliada
Directed and performed
by Nikolai Khalezin
“A marvellous work”
IRISH PREMIÈRE
“wit, vitality and
inventiveness”
TOM STOPPARD
A monologue about jeans, rock music and freedom,
remembering how jeans were a symbol of freedom and defiance
under the Soviet regime – “a little bit of America and Britain” –
going on to evoke the degradation and imprisonment Khalezin
and others have suffered under the authoritarian rule in Belarus.
IRISH PREMIÈRE
Performed by Nikolai Khalezin, Pavel Rodak-Gorodnitsky,
Yana Rusakevich, Oleg Sidorchik, Anna Solomianskaya,
Denis Tarasenko, Marina Yurevich
Skilfully using extracts from Pinter’s writings, from
The Homecoming in 1965 to Ashes to Ashes in
1996 to the playwright’s Nobel acceptance
speech in 2006, along with documentary
monologues from Belarussian dissidents,
this work questions truth in life and truth
in art, and exposes the repression
and brutality to be found in
Belarus and elsewhere.
theatre w 09
Saturday 16 August
8pm
The Watergate Theatre
Admission €22/€20
Duration 1hr 15mins
In Russian with English surtitles
Contains some nudity
and strong language
Post-show discussion
#####
“dazzling production”
THE GUARDIAN
“this is world class theatre,
built on the guts
of raw experience”
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Zone Of Silence
Directed by Vladimir Scherban
IRISH PREMIÈRE
Performed by Nikolai Khalezin, Pavel
Rodak-Gorodnitsky, Yana Rusakevich,
Oleg Sidorchik, Anna Solomianskaya,
Denis Tarasenko, Marina Yurevich
Literature editing by Konstantin Steshik
Conception by Vladimir Scherban,
Natalia Koliada and Nikolai Khalezin
“We come from a zone of silence”, says
Natalia Koliada, co-founder of Belarus
Free Theatre. This three-part work opens
with the actors recalling their painful
childhoods, continuing with portraits of
people on the margins of Belarus society
and exploding in the third act with a
series of harsh images and statistics
about life in Belarus today.
Sunday 17 August
8pm
The Watergate Theatre
Admission €22/€20
Duration 2hrs 40mins, two intervals
In Russian with English surtitles
Contains some nudity
and strong language
Post-show discussion
“packs a punch”
THE TIMES
“Devastating… a masterpiece
of theatrical irony”
THE GUARDIAN
Ticket Package: €55 for all three
Belarus Free Theatre performances
10 w classical
music
Friday 8 August
8.15pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €30/€20
Latecomers will not be admitted
until after the interval
PROGRAMME
Elizabethan Songs by:
THOMAS CAMPION
JOHN DOWLAND
ROBERT JOHNSON
Instrumental Music by:
ANTHONY HOLBORNE
WILLIAM BYRD
GREGORY HUWETT
And a selection of English
& Irish folksongs, arranged
by Crawford Young
Andreas Scholl (GERMANY)
countertenor
Crawford Young (US)
lute
Andreas Scholl is “one of the most outstanding performers of our time” (The
Irish Times). As one of the world’s leading countertenors, he has worked with
such conductors as Philippe Herreweghe, William Christie, John Eliot Gardiner
and Paul McCreesh, and made his own conducting debut in 2005. His operatic
engagements include Bertarido in Handel’s Rodelinda at Glyndebourne and The
Metropolitan Opera, and the title role in Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Royal
Danish Opera, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and Opéra de Lausanne. As a
recording artist, he has won several international awards for his recital CDs and,
in recent years, he has recorded some of his own compositions with orchestral
accompaniment. Andreas Scholl also teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
Crawford Young is a founding member of the medieval ensembles Project Ars
Nova and the Ferrara Ensemble of Basel. He has also performed with Jordi
Savall’s Hesperion XX and Karl-Ernst Schröder, and is regarded as one of the
most prominent interpreters of early lute music.
Kilkenny Arts Festival, in association with Music in Kilkenny, is thrilled to
welcome these two outstanding artists for the opening concert of this
year’s festival.
THE TIMES
ERIC LARRAYADIEU
Note: Tickets retained from the postponed concert in January will be honoured.
“the world's most
cultured counter-tenor
voice… I would have
backed him to have
walked on water”
classical w 11
music
Saturday 9 August
7.30pm - Note early starting time
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €25/€23
Latecomers will not be
admitted until a suitable
break in the programme
Camerata Kilkenny (IRELAND)
Nadja Zwiener (GERMANY)
guest director
Claire Booth (UK)
soprano
An ensemble of internationally-acclaimed Irish-based artists, Camerata Kilkenny
specialises in the performance of Baroque music, often combining 17th and 18th
century music with the work of contemporary composers. Since its debut in
1999, the ensemble has performed at many national and international festivals,
and enjoys collaborating with emerging and established artists from Ireland and
overseas. In 2007, with violinist Maya Homburger, they won the Preis der
Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik, the prestigious German recording award.
Leading Camerata Kilkenny in this stirring programme is the extraordinary Nadja
Zwiener. A passionate chamber musician, Nadja is a founding member of the
Kuss Quartett in Germany, leader for The English Concert, one of Europe’s leading
baroque orchestras, and regularly leads the internationally-renowned early music
ensemble Les Arts Florissants.
Guest soloist is the charming and versatile Claire Booth, one of the most
talented singers of her generation, who regularly performs at such venues as
the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Wigmore Hall and the Palais des Beaux Arts
and with such ensembles as the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia
Orchestra and the London Sinfonietta.
With the superb David Staff, an expert on period and modern instruments, on
baroque trumpet, this promises to be a charming evening of early music.
CAMERATA KILKENNY
NADJA ZWIENER - violin
GEORGE CRAWFORD - violin
CLAIRE DUFF - violin
MARJA GAYNOR - violin
ANITA VEDRES - violin
LOUISE HOGAN - viola
MALGOSIA ZIEMKIEWICZ
ARTABE - viola
SARAH MCMAHON - cello
MALACHY ROBINSON - double bass
HANNAH McLAUGHLIN - oboe
LAOISE O’BRIEN - recorder
DAVID STAFF - trumpet
MALCOLM PROUD - harpsichord
PROGRAMME
JS BACH
Cantatas: Weichet Nur (BWV 202,
The Wedding Cantata)
Jauchzet Gott (BWV 51)
JS BACH
Violin Concerto in E Major
(BWV 1042)
JS BACH
Brandenburg Concerto No.2
(BWV 1047)
KATHY PANAMA
12 w classical
music
JOHN PHILIP SOUSA
The Gladiator March
ARTHUR SULLIVAN
Overture H.M.S. Pinafore
JULIUS FUČÍK
Entrance of the Gladiators
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK
Largo: New World Symphony
EDWARD ELGAR
Sea Pictures
NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Scheherazade
RONALD BINGE
The Watermill
RONALD BINGE
Sailing By
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Overture Fingal’s Cave
HANS ZIMMER (arr. Wasson)
Gladiator
John Williams
(AUSTRALIA)
Monday 11 August
7.30pm - Note early starting time
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €30/€20
Latecomers will not be
admitted until a suitable
break in the programme.
PROGRAMME
classical w 13
music
guitar
RTÉ Concert
Orchestra (IRELAND)
Gearóid Grant
conductor
Áine Mulvey
mezzo-soprano
The RTÉ Concert Orchestra (CO) has been cherished by
Irish audiences throughout its 60-year history, whether
performing with international stars such as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido
Domingo or Kiri Te Kanawa, or with such leading Irish artists as Cara
O’Sullivan, Virginia Kerr and Altan. With its first rate repertoire, the RTÉ
CO appears at leading national and international festivals, on RTÉ Radio
and Television and in the National Concert Hall, while through its
recordings on CD and in many films, the orchestra’s performances reach
a worldwide audience.
Conducting the orchestra in Kilkenny will be Gearóid Grant, one of the
most energetic and enduring conductors in Ireland today. Gearóid has
conducted the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra,
the Irish Chamber Orchestra and, for the last 28 years, the National
Youth Orchestra of Ireland.
Guest soloist for this concert will be mezzo-soprano Áine Mulvey, a
soloist with the National Chamber Choir of Ireland and many other
choirs and choral societies, in addition to her many operatic
engagements. A rousing evening is in store!
Thursday 14 August
8pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €30/€25
Latecomers will not be
admitted until a suitable
break in the programme.
“the undisputed king
of the classical guitar”
THE TIMES
John Williams is one of the foremost classical guitarists of our time. Born in
Australia, and taught the guitar by his father, he has toured the world playing
solo and with orchestra, and has appeared regularly on radio and TV. Amongst
his collaborations with other musicians, those with Julian Bream, Itzhak Perlman,
Andre Previn, Cleo Laine, John Dankworth and Daniel Barenboim are particularly
important. His other musical activities have included the groups SKY, John
Williams and Friends, Attacca, The National Youth Jazz Orchestra with Paul Hart,
Paco Pena, the Chilean group Inti-Illimani, his “World Tour” programme with
composer and virtuoso performer Richard Harvey and his “Together and Solo”
programme with jazz guitarist John Etheridge.
John Williams’ recordings reveal a wide-ranging repertoire, from classical to
contemporary, and music from the movies to various South American composers.
He recently released El Diablo Suelto, a collection of Venezuelan music, while
his latest release from Sony Classical is Places Between, a double CD with John
Etheridge, recorded live in Dublin.
A very special opportunity to experience the magic of this guitar master’s
performance in the glorious surrounds of St Canice’s Cathedral.
“infinite shades of
colour…refined
sensitivity”
HONG KONG STANDARD
music
classical w 15
music
OLIVER MILLS
14 w classical
Latecomers will not be
admitted until a suitable
break in the programme.
CONCERT 1
Wednesday 13 August
8pm
The Great Hall, Kilkenny Castle
Admission €20/€18
Post-concert discussion
Upstairs Bar at Morrisson’s
(See p.31)
CONCERT 2
Thursday 14 August
1.10pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €15/€10
PROGRAMME
PAVEL HAAS
Woodwind Quintet, op.10
ALBERT ROUSSEL
Trio for flute, viola & cello, op.40
SAMUEL BARBER
Summer Music for Woodwind, op.31
RTÉ LYRIC FM WILL RECORD THIS CONCERT
FOR BROADCAST AT A LATER DATE.
CONCERT 3
NICOLA BIRKHAN - violin
EVA DOLLFUß - violin
DOROTHEA HEMKEN - viola
ANKE HEYN - cello
DOMINIK GREGER - double bass
Friday 15 August
8pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €20/€18
SABINE KITTEL - flute
VOLKER HANEMANN - oboe
CHRISTIAN DOLLFUß - clarinet
ANDREAS BÖRTITZ - bassoon
JULIUS RÖNNEBECK - horn
PROGRAMME
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Quintet in G Minor, op.39
FRANZ SCHUBERT
Octet in F Major, D.803
THE DRESDEN GROUP
PAUL RIVINIUS - piano
The Dresden Group
(GERMANY)
At the core of this year’s classical music programme is a mouth-watering
series of concerts by The Dresden Group. This highly talented ensemble,
brought together especially for Kilkenny, is comprised of the Kapellquintett
Dresden (wind quintet), of the renowned Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden*,
one of the world’s top orchestras, along with colleagues who are currently, or
have been, closely linked to the musical life of Dresden as members of either
the Staatskapelle or the Dresden Philharmonic, and who are now with some
of the other leading orchestras in Germany. Completing the ensemble is
acclaimed pianist Paul Rivinius. United by their rich tradition and deep passion
for chamber music, these exceptional musicians have devised a colourful
programme of music which includes some of the classics of mixed chamber
ensembles and also explores the fascinating and extremely different approach
to chamber music by composers in the first half of the 20th century.
PROGRAMME
HANNS EISLER
14 Ways To Describe The Rain
IGOR STRAVINSKY
Septet
DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
Piano Trio No.2 in E Minor, op.67
CONCERT 4
“From the wealth of glorious
memories accumulated over
my artistic career, the sound of
this peerless orchestra always
stirs anew feelings of tender
gratitude and admiration”
RICHARD STRAUSS ON THE
STAATSKAPELLE’S 400th JUBILEE IN 1948
Sunday 17 August
3pm
Castalia Hall*, Ballytobin,
Callan, Co Kilkenny
Admission €15/€10,
*Bus from The Parade at 2.15pm, €2
PROGRAMME
Kilkenny Arts Festival is very excited to introduce The Dresden Group in 2008
for what, it is anticipated, will mark the beginning of a fruitful and lasting
collaboration over the coming years.
GUSTAV MAHLER
Movement for piano quartet
in A Minor
BOHUSLAV MARTINU
Trio for flute, cello & piano
W.A. MOZART
Quintet for piano & wind
in E Flat, K452
*The Staatskapelle Dresden is one of the world’s oldest and most esteemed orchestras.
Founded in 1548, conductors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries included Carl
Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner and, as composer also, Richard Strauss. The orchestra
is based at the magnificent Semperoper in Dresden.
Ticket Package: €48 for any three
concerts by The Dresden Group
16 w classical
music
Saturday 16 August
1.10pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €15/€10
Latecomers will not be
admitted until a suitable
break in the programme
Ulster Orchestra
Malcolm
Proud (IRELAND)
organ
PROGRAMME
JS BACH
Clavier Übung III
• Praeludium in E flat
• Kyrie, Gott Vater
• Christe, aller Welt Trost
• Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist
• Allein Gott
• Diess sind die heilgen
zehen Geboth
• Vater unser im
Himmelreich
• Christ unser Herr
• Aus tieffer Noth
• Jesus Christus unser
Heiland
• Fuga in E flat
“an insightful player…
epic quality… awesome”
THE IRISH TIMES
“dramatic and
flawlessly controlled”
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Born in Dublin, Malcolm Proud studied with Gustav Leonhardt in
Amsterdam and won first prize at the Edinburgh International
Harpsichord Competition in 1982. Since then, he has established
an international career as an organist and harpsichordist,
performing with such groups as the Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment under Gustav Leonhardt, the English Baroque
Soloists under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the Gabrieli Consort and
the Academy of Ancient Music, and touring throughout Europe,
North America and Japan. He is a member of the Irish Baroque
Orchestra and a founder member of Camerata Kilkenny.
This recital marks the release of Malcolm Proud’s latest CD,
Bach’s Clavier Übung III, recorded on the Metzler organ in Stein
am Rhein, Switzerland in February. His other recordings include
Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Brandenburg Concerto 5 and the
sonatas for violin and harpsichord with Maya Homburger.
He is a lecturer on the BA Degree Course in Music at Waterford
Institute of Technology and the organist at St Canice’s Cathedral.
It is also fitting that such a virtuoso organist has this opportunity
to showcase the recently restored 1853 Bevington organ at St
Canice’s Cathedral as part of the festival.
classical w 17
music
(NORTHERN IRELAND)
Nicholas Braithwaite
conductor
Priya Mitchell (UK)
violin
(UK)
Following its tremendous performance at St Canice’s
Cathedral last year, the festival is delighted to welcome
the Ulster Orchestra back to Kilkenny. Established over
the last 40 years as one of the major symphony
ensembles in the UK, the Orchestra remains the
cornerstone of cultural life in Northern Ireland,
performing regularly in its home venues of the
Waterfront and Ulster Halls in Belfast, and fulfilling a
significant educational role for young people in the
region through its extensive outreach programme.
Clearly “enriching life through music” is not only a
mission statement; for this orchestra, it is a way of life,
realised through its many and wide-ranging artistic and
educational achievements.
Directing the Ulster Orchestra’s programme in Kilkenny
will be distinguished conductor Nicholas Braithwaite,
who brings to the evening an extraordinary breadth of classical and
operatic experience. Guest soloist for the Mozart Concerto will be the
exciting Priya Mitchell, “one of the foremost violinists of her
generation” (The Strad). An evening brimming with promise.
Saturday 16 August
8pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €30/€20
Latecomers will not be
admitted until a suitable
break in the programme
PROGRAMME
Lv BEETHOVEN
Egmont Overture
WA MOZART
Violin Concerto No.5
A DVOŘÁK
Symphony No.8
“vibrant elegance, full
of dexterity… A fine
evening of music”
BELFAST TELEGRAPH
“utterly charming,
poised and graceful”
THE INDEPENDENT
music w 19
LISA ROZE
18 wmusic
Stout & McKay
(UK/SHETLANDS)
A more connected world is all well and good, but sometimes a
degree of isolation can play a beneficial role in the life of local
accents and music. The Shetlands are a case in point, with their
strong historical ties to Norway and a rich tradition of fiddle music
that bridges the Celtic and Viking spheres of influence.
Friday 8 August
8.30pm
Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel
Admission €21/€19
It’s a tradition brilliantly harnessed by fiddler Chris Stout and
harper Catriona McKay, whose atmospheric duo playing has
evolved out of a decade-long partnership in the much admired
Shetland group Fiddler’s Bid. Laebrack, the first of what should be
many recordings together, bristles with the special energy of two
contrasting musical personalities, with Stout’s uninhibited fiddle
style tempered by the graceful precision of McKay’s clarsach, or
traditional Scottish harp.
Please note: This is a
standing only performance
MOUSSA AG KEYNA
voice, guitar
AMINATOU GOUMAR
voice, guitar, percussion
HERVÉ DE RATULD
bass
FRANCIS ARNAOUD
drums
ADIL MIRGHANI
percussion
“fine bursts of blues
guitar work and light,
insistent percussion”
THE GUARDIAN
Toumast (MALI)
Mali is a powerhouse of African music that continues to reveal new
treasures, and in the last decade they’ve come from deep in The Sahara,
where the desert tribesmen of that hostile, beautiful terrain carry with
them a hypnotic desert blues.
It’s the music so memorably brought to a global audience by Tinariwen,
the touareg group of which Moussa Ag Keyna, whose potent guitar riffs
drive Toumast onward, is a former member. His songs are a product of the
bitter war that raged over three decades between the Malian government
and the Sahara’s Berber nomads, during which music took on a powerful
role in the Algerian and Libyan camps of the displaced touareg tribesmen.
The insurgency nearly claimed the life of Ag Keyna, injured in the fighting
in 1993 and expatriated to France, out of which has emerged Toumast,
brilliantly marrying the hypnotic desert rhythms and defiant songs of the
Sahara with the rock sophistication of his life today as a Parisien.
Their easy compatibility is allied to a shared appetite for broad
horizons, where Scottish, Scandinavian and Irish tunes are opened
up to a raft of creative possibilities, with improvisations that evoke
tango and Balkan music. On a clear day the view from the
Shetlands is considerable.
Saturday 9 August
1pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €13/€11
CHRIS STOUT
fiddle, viola
CATRIONA MCKAY
Scottish harp
“a divine concoction
of tradition and bold
imagination”
THE IRISH TIMES
Saturday 9 August
10.30pm
Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel
Admission €21/€19
Please note: This is a
standing only performance
EVELIO GALAN
vocals
ARIEL HERNANDEZ
tres, coros
CARLOS TALENS
guitar, coros
PAUL WILLIAMSON
trumpet
ANDREW CSIBI
bass
CONOR GUILFOYLE
bongos, campana
FRAILAN MORAN
congas
& SPECIAL GUEST
DAVID L’ESPRIT
vocals, clarinet
“some of the best
Cuban music this side
of the Atlantic”
SUNDAY TRIBUNE
Havana Son
music w 21
MATTIAS EDWALL
20 w music
(CUBA, ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA,
SPAIN, ITALY, IRELAND)
Sunday 10 August
8pm
Hotel Kilkenny
Admission €23/€21
A pleasingly diverse snapshot of Irish multiculturalism at work,
Havana Son brings together talented musicians from Cuba,
Argentina, Australia, Spain and Italy, all of whom have grasped
the opportunity of musical life in Ireland, plus the cream of
domestic Latin players, and they gel perfectly.
Since their last visit, they’ve released Son Fronteras, an
acclaimed CD with a hugely invigorating take on son, the
guitar-driven acoustic idiom that is the precursor to the modern
salsa sound. Popularised so memorably by Buena Vista Social
Club, son is the soundtrack to Cuban daily life, and at its
melodic core is the double act of the indigenous Cuban guitar
known as tres, played here by Ariel Hernandez, and the
Spanish guitar of Carlos Talens. Andrew Csibi’s upright bass,
Frailan Moran’s congas, along with Guilfoyle’s bongos and allimportant campana, or cowbell, lend the rhythmic vitality that
is the heartbeat of the island’s music.
Soaring over the top are Paul Williamson’s trumpet and the
powerful voice of Habanero Evelio Galan, plus a very special
guest for Kilkenny, a luminary of the French Latin music scene,
singer and clarinetist David L’Esprit.
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EST
Esbjörn Svensson Trio
(SWEDEN)
Since their very first Stockholm gigs in the early ’90s, EST have done it
their way, evolving organically, creating a soundscape that embraces
electronica, dance and folk music in the spirit of free expression that
characterises the best qualities of jazz in Europe today. Previous Irish gigs
have united hardened purists and jazz newcomers alike, all of whom will
be out in force for this Kilkenny coup, their only Irish concert in 2008.
Drawing base elements from alt. country, jungle and drum ’n’ bass, the
grooves of bassist Dan Berglund and drummer Magnus Öström are now
more assertive, and have grown in depth and texture. Svensson’s urgent
piano motifs remain the heart of the trio’s sound, over which he lays
ambient effects and lyrical solos that are firmly rooted in the meditative
Nordic sound developed by pianist Bobo Stenson in the ’70s.
A decade since their inception and ten albums into their creative odyssey,
there is an irresistible sense of playful curiosity and adventure about EST
that shows no sign of waning, and their probing spirit has the sense of
renewal that is the hallmark of great music, beyond category.
ESBJÖRN SVENSSON
piano
DAN BERGLUND
bass
MAGNUS ÖSTRÖM
drums
“Not what jazz was
but a vision of what
it can be”
NEW YORK TIMES
Paolo
Angeli
Monday 11 August
9pm
Hotel Kilkenny
Admission €23/€21
Two-ticket package: €28 for this
event & GAA Symposium (p.40)
MARTIN HAYES
fiddle
DENNIS CAHILL
guitar
& SPECIAL GUEST
HELEN HAYES
voice
(SARDINIA)
Hayes & Cahill
Out of Sardinia’s rugged tradition
comes something entirely new and
unexpected. Paolo Angeli plays the
chittara sardo, the island’s indigenous
guitar, modified here with endless
echoes and loops, pick-ups and
preparations, and put to the service of
solo improvisations that are informed
by his previous collaborations with
musicians like Fred Frith, Elliot Sharp and Otomo Yoshihide.
Angeli’s music occupies expansive and contemporary terrain, from
gutsy, free improv to a gorgeous reading of Bjork’s Unravel, yet
it is somehow simultaneously imbued with the unmistakable
harmonic signature of Sardinia’s vocal and instrumental traditions.
Remarkably, Welcome Here Again, just released on Compass, is only their
third album together, and marks a further chapter in their distillation of
sound and winnowing out of anything superfluous.
THE IRISH EXAMINER
Tuesday 12 August
1.10pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €13/€11
“A tour de force of
technique and…
highly musical”
THE WIRE
(IRELAND & US)
Tuesday 12 August
8pm
Cleere’s, Parliament St
Admission €15/€13
Few could have anticipated the illustrious path upon which Martin Hayes
and Dennis Cahill were setting out when they played their first gigs in
Seattle in the ’80s, but their journey deep into the heart of traditional
melody has also taken them to the world’s greatest halls, evidence of
something universal at the heart of this musical partnership that
speaks so effortlessly.
“Beauty and sublime
artistry proliferate”
music w 23
NANNI ANGELI
22 w music
Terje Isungset
It comes close to capturing their artistry, which must be experienced live
to appreciate the palpable forces at work. Their bond has only grown in
intensity down the years, in a nightly dialogue that seems to begin afresh
every time they play, yet carries the best of the many conversations that
have preceded it.
(NORWAY)
In their Zen-like way, the topic often starts out the same: the lyrical music
of East Clare learnt in childhood from Martin’s father PJ Hayes, whose
melodies are a portal to their unique sound world, where time itself
seems subservient to the music’s progress, graceful and unobstructed.
His solo concerts may be a more intimate affair, but they nonetheless reveal
a similar preoccupation with nature and its ability to provide. Isungset’s drum
kit is like no other, built around an extraordinary bass of loose-tuned animal
hide, augmented by chimes of arctic birch and sheep bells, strange found
cymbals of granite and slate, and his own eerie vocalisations, like the
shaman connecting us to the wild from which we’ve become removed.
Terje Isungset’s most recent recordings come from his celebrated Ice Concerts,
where this remarkable musician carves massive instruments straight from the
arctic ice, and performs upon them until the coming of the spring thaw.
“Isungset liberates these
haunting, enigmatic
sounds from nature at its
harshest and puts them
at the service of art and beauty”
THE IRISH TIMES
24 w music
music w 25
Friday 15 August
9pm
Kilkenny River Court Hotel
Admission €21/€19
Savina Yannatou &
Primavera en Salonico
SAVINA YANNATOU
voice
KOSTAS VOMVOLOS
quanun, accordion
MICHALIS SIGANIDIS
double bass
YANNIS ALEXANDRIS
oud, guitar, tamboura
KOSTAS THEODOROU
percussion
HARIS LAMBRAKIS
ney, recorders
KYRIAKOS GOUVENTAS
violin
“A Greek goddess on a
mission…Yannatou’s
voice is astonishingly
pure and endlessly
adaptable”
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
(GREECE)
TEJEDOR
With the Mediterranean, The Balkans
and Eastern Europe as their muse, ECM
artist Savina Yannatou and her group
Primavera en Salonica offer a sound
world that collates Sephardic songs from
Greece, Corsica, Italy, Sicily, Galicia,
Palestine, Albania, Bulgaria and
Armenia, illuminating all points on the
European compass. Rallying around
Yannatou’s shimmering voice, these
seven virtuoso musicians reveal a deep
respect and empathy for their repertoire,
yet follow their tasteful instincts when
improvisation becomes desirable.
Ireland Asturias Project
(IRELAND/SPAIN)
The excitement of bringing artists together is woven into every great festival,
and Kilkenny will foster a harmonious new friendship with this debut joint
performance of new traditional music from Ireland and Spain.
Tejedor hail from Aviles, on Spain’s rugged Asturian coastline, and these three
siblings are steeped in the vibrant songs and dances of the principality,
characterised by the brisk rhythms of the panderu, a hybrid tambourine, and
gaita, the bagpipes indigenous to the region. Brothers Jose Manuel and
Javier are fêted as leading pipers of their generation and, for her part, their
sister Eva is also an exceptional singer.
It’s an eloquent statement on their
shared Greek ancestry and the culture
that down the millennia has mediated
the oriental and occidental worlds.
Here, Eastern modalities and asymmetric
rhythms bond with their Western
equivalents, melismatic vocals of Persian
influence cohabitate with European
polyphony, and the regal oud, ney and
qanun are mirrored by guitar, recorder
and accordion.
Throughout, Yannatou’s radiant voice
marshals these powerful forces into
a cohesive whole, as she moves
uninhibited between dialects and
idioms, evoking the spirits of songs past
in a vocal and linguistic tour de force.
The musical kinship between Ireland and Spain’s northwest is welldocumented, and teasing out the rich possibilities for creative exchange are
Buille, another family enterprise, which sees Armagh’s Vallely brothers, Niall
and Caoimhín, joined by Paul Meehan and Cormac Breathnach. It has all the
portents of a spectacular night’s music, with a set from low whistle virtuoso
Breathnach, and performances from Buille and Tejedor, prior to a finale that
brings these abundant resources together and harnesses two great traditions.
MARCO DE LUCA
Wednesday 13 August
8.30pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €23/€21
JOSE MANUEL TEJEDOR
Asturian pipes, flute, whistle
JAVIER TEJEDOR
Asturian pipes, button
accordion, percussion
EVA TEJEDOR
voice, percussion
BUILLE
NIALL VALLELY
concertina
CAOIMHÍN VALLELY
piano
PAUL MEEHAN
guitar
& SPECIAL GUEST
CORMAC BREATHNACH
low whistle
“a rich mix of Asturian
traditional music and
new ideas”
FOLKWORLD
“Buille is as fresh a
breath that’s blown
through traditional circles
in a long, long time”
THE IRISH TIMES
26 w music
Saturday 16 August
8pm
Kilkenny River Court Hotel
Admission €21/€19
KEVIN BRADY TRIO
FEAT. BILL CARROTHERS
BILL CARROTHERS - piano
DAVID REDMOND - bass
KEVIN BRADY - drums
SOWETO KINCH/MICHAEL
JANISCH/DAVID LYTTLE
SOWETO KINCH - alto saxophone
MICHAEL JANISCH - bass
DAVID LYTTLE - drums
“Carrothers doesn't do
coasting… neither do
this trio”
THE IRISH TIMES
“Fresh sound, aggressive
virtuosity and raw, bluesy
energy mark Kinch out as
an outstanding player”
JAZZWISE
wired w 27
Kevin Brady
Trio feat.
Bill Carrothers
&
Soweto Kinch/
Michael Janisch/
David Lyttle
Lisa Hannigan (IRELAND)
Well-known from her involvement in many projects on the Irish
music scene, Lisa Hannigan has contributed backing vocals to
Sideways Down from The Frames’ album Burn the Maps, in
addition to What a Curious Notion from Skylarkin’, Mic
Christopher’s posthumous debut album. She also performed on the
soundtrack for the Irish film Goldfish Memory and contributed
guest vocals on Some Surprise for The Cake Sale charity album,
but is probably best known for her collaborations with Damien
Rice. Due out this autumn is Lisa’s eagerly anticipated debut
album, recorded in Dublin’s Cauldron studio with producer Jason
Boshoff and mixed in The Strongroom, London.
A brace of trios led by Irish drummers in this jazz double
bill, exhibiting the very best of talent here in animated
dialogue with luminaries from the UK and the US.
With two tours and a successful CD under their belt,
Kevin Brady here reconvenes his acclaimed trio with
Dublin bassist David Redmond and Michigan pianist
Bill Carrothers, one of the most lyrical and individual
voices in jazz today. Carrothers is a pianist who stands
apart from the crowd and his impressive back catalogue
includes the elegiac Armistice and Civil War Diaries,
CDs that stand as powerful statements on the human
dimension in all wars.
Soweto Kinch also carries a taste for
narrative into his music, albeit from a
different perspective. A recipient of two
MOBOs, three BBC Jazz Awards and a
Mercury nomination, the young Londoner
has fashioned an engaging, clever and often
droll union of hip hop and jazz. A brilliant
wordsmith and MC, he’s also a superbly
adept and fiery alto saxophonist, and that’s
where the musical emphasis will lie in this
trio encounter with US bassist Michael
Janisch and David Lyttle, the hard-swinging
young drummer from Belfast, who is
making such waves on the Irish jazz scene.
Good Tiger
(IRELAND)
Dynamic live performers,
Good Tiger’s influences
include Sparklehorse, Miles
Davis, Orbital and Curtis
Mayfield. Their download
single Dead Record in a Vinyl
Desert has garnered strong
airplay and they have just
released their debut album
The Dynamics of Alcatraz.
Saturday 9 August
3.30pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €18
Meet the Artist 7pm
Upstairs Bar at Morrisson’s
(See p.31)
28 w wired
wired w 29
Tuesday 12 August
Doors 7.30, Support 8pm
The Hub at Cillín Hill,
Dublin Road, Kilkenny
Admission €32.50
Please note: This is a standing
only performance.
Sunday 17 August
8pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €40
Spiritualized+ (UK)
Mercury Rev
(US)
“effortlessly epic” NME
Psychedelic, experimental, rock band Mercury Rev commanded worldwide
attention with their opus Deserter’s Songs in 1998, its sweeping orchestrations
and poetically heartfelt lyrics earning album of the year accolades from NME and
MOJO. Their thrill-seeking continued on All is Dream in 2001, before stumbling
into exhilarating new musical galaxies with The Secret Migration (2005),
described by Rolling Stone as “their great life-cycle album, their own Dark Side
of the Moon, except this one ends in promise and light”. Snowflake Midnight,
their forthcoming release, confirms their rare essence is intact, but tilted on its
axis. With its injection of vintage and present-day electronics, this sounds like a
regenerated Mercury Rev. Few bands can reinvent themselves even once, but this
heralds the sound of lightning striking again. Not to be missed.
Staking out a common ground between minimalism and lush
symphonics, Spiritualized’s debut album, Lazer Guided Melodies
(1992), was a masterful, blissed-out affair, followed by the heady,
dense Pure Phase (1995), before the arrival of the landmark
Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997). NME’s album
of the year jettisoned the band’s earlier drones, tremolo and
phased tones in favour of a gospel and blues influence, which
continued on Let it Come Down (2001) and Amazing Grace (2003).
Inspired by a serious illness in 2005, main man Jason Pierce
created the recently-released Songs in A&E (2008), full of “songs
of love, mortality and resilience” (The Irish Times), “one of his
most gorgeous albums yet” (NME).
Oppenheimer
Alphastates
3epkano
(NORTHEN IRELAND)
(IRELAND)
(IRELAND)
Combining smart song-writing with
exuberant melodies, this Belfast-based
duo are set to restore the three-minute
pop song to its rightful throne. Their
debut self-titled album with acclaimed
US indie label Bar None was followed
by the equally bright Take the Whole
Mid-Range and Boost It.
A breathtaking, brooding mix of
electronica, pop and rock, Alphastates
debut album Made From Sand garnered
many prestigious awards, festival
headline slots and TV appearances.
Fronted by Kilkenny native Catherine
Dowling, their much-anticipated followup, Human Nature is on the way…
Dublin-based music ensemble 3epkano specialise in
producing original and innovative soundtracks for
films from the silent movie era. Critically-acclaimed
for their headline shows in Ireland and the US, they
have also been commissioned to produce new music
for such prestigious institutions as the National
Gallery of Ireland, the Film Society of Lincoln Center
and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.
(see also page 35)
“gorgeous moments of
meandering give tracks
space to unfold and
become many-splendoured
things. This is space
exploration at its best”
THE IRISH TIMES
“an album you can
retreat to for succour”
NME
(IRELAND)
Tenpastseven
& Jazz Panda
ALL GIGS:
Cleere’s, Parliament St
Doors 8pm
Music 9pm
Admission €12/€10
Tenpastseven’s debut album Shut Up
Your Face follows their successful EP
onehundredandfiftydegrees. They are from Kerry.
Kilkenny-based Jazz Panda play instrumental
music and have recorded for Problem at the
Pancake House compilation albums.
Halves
& A Safe Dry Place
TENPASTSEVEN & JAZZ PANDA
Friday 8 August
HALVES & A SAFE DRY PLACE
Sunday 10 August
DAE KIM & HOUSE OF COSY CUSHIONS
Thursday 14 August
SOMADROME & SUPERNOVA SCOTIA
Friday 15 August
Wired @ Cleere’s:
Kilkenny Arts Festival
seeking to give young
Irish bands an
opportunity to be heard
by a wider audience.
Ireland’s most intriguing new act, Halves’ sound
is rich, multi-layered and cinematic. An Irish
Sigur Ros? EP: Haunt Me When I’m Drowsy
Sounds and hisses, noises and melodies:
A Safe Dry Place’s first live performance in
two years. People seem to like them.
Dae Kim
& House of Cosy Cushions
Dae Kim mix raw Sixties garage and sexy, burning,
blissed-out guitar. Comparisons: My Bloody Valentine,
The Afghan Whigs.
Album: Matador; Single: Sticky Fingers
House of Cosy Cushion’s music roves from energetic
and hypnotic to haunting. EP: Palace for the Lost Ones
Somadrome
& Supernova Scotia
Electro-acoustic to electronic pop, Somadrome’s
third album introduces vocal accompaniment for
miniature symphonies and electronic interludes.
Album: Of Pattern & Purpose
Supernova Scotia adapt bedroom-produced
synth-pop for live setting. Influences: Yellow
Magic Orchestra, Kate Bush, Royksopp.
Meet the
Artists
If you have ever wanted to know
how a music performance, art
exhibition/installation or theatre
production comes together, this is
your chance to ask some of the
extraordinary artists and curators
at this year’s festival how they do
what they do.
Saturday 9 August at 7pm
Singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan
(p. 27), with Matthew Nolan of
3epkano, Curator of Wired, the
festival’s new music programme.
Wednesday 13 August at 10.30pm
Members of The Dresden Group
(p. 14-15), joined by Susan Proud,
Co-curator of the festival’s Classical
Music Programme.
Saturday 16 August at 10pm
Artist Brian Hand (p. 50), with
Hugh Mulholland, Curator of the
festival’s Visual Art Programme,
and Anna O’Sullivan, Director of
the Butler Gallery.
A number of post-show discussions
and conversations with artists will also
take place in performance venues.
Please see the following pages:
Cindy Cummings & Todd Winkler (p.5)
Tobacco Factory Theatre (p.5)
Gare St Lazare Players (p.7)
Belarus Free Theatre (p.8-9)
OLIVER MILLS
Wired @ Cleere’s
meet the w 31
artists
COLM GRAY
30 w wired
Upstairs Bar at Morrisson’s,
Hibernian Hotel, Ormonde St
Admission Free
32 w day-by-day
main programme w 33
FRIDAY 8
SATURDAY 9
WATERGATE THEATRE
SUNDAY 10
50 Simon Patterson 3pm
Brian Hand 7pm
Castle Grounds
7 The End 3pm
35 3epkano: Sunrise
2.30pm
2 Hélios II Finale
Castle Grounds
6 Translations 8pm
The Great Hall
19 Stout & McKay 1pm
39 James Ryan &
Ross Raisin 1.10pm
30 Tenpastseven &
Jazz Panda 9pm
6 Translations 8pm
The Great Hall
12 RTÉ CO 7.30pm
6 Translations 8pm
The Great Hall
14 The Dresden Group 8pm 50 Brian Hand 7pm
Concert 1
Castle Grounds
The Great Hall
50
47 Brian Hand 7pm
Castle Grounds
23 Paolo Angeli 1.10pm
7 The End 6pm (Preview)
7 The End 6pm (& PostShow Meet the Artists)
41 Jon Lee Anderson 6pm
THE MALTINGS
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm (& Post-Show
Meet the Artists)
The Maltings
OTHER CITY & COUNTY
VENUES
35 3epkano: The Cat and
the Canary 6pm
15 The Dresden Group 8pm 16 Malcolm Proud 1.10pm
Concert 3
17 Ulster Orchestra 8pm
20 Havana Son 10.30pm
21 EST 8pm
18 Toumast 8.30pm
Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel
Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel
Hotel Kilkenny
47
48
48
49
49
50
50
ST JOHN’S PRIORY
THE HERITAGE COUNCIL
ROTHE HOUSE
ROTHE HOUSE
ROTHE HOUSE
BUTLER HOUSE
KILKENNY CASTLE GROUNDS
KILKENNY CASTLE GROUNDS
Street Spectacle
Classical Music
31 MEET THE ARTISTS
Brian Hand 10pm
Music
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
40 GAA & the Creation of
Modern Ire 6pm
Hotel Kilkenny
28 Mercury Rev
& support 8pm
The Hub at Cillín Hill
42 Anne Enright and
Patrick McGrath 6pm
Newpark Hotel
43 Fintan O’Toole 6pm
The Heritage Council
44 Harry Clifton &
Ruth Padel 6pm
Kilkenny Ormonde Hotel
36 Donal McCann
on Screen 10am
Cineplex Kilkenny
15 The Dresden Group 3pm
Concert 4
Castalia Hall, Ballytobin
Film
5 KuddelMuddel 6pm
Oxfam Ireland
5 KuddelMuddel 6pm
Oxfam Ireland
5 KuddelMuddel 6pm
Oxfam Ireland
Literature
25 Ireland Asturias Project 26 Jazz Double Bill 8pm
9pm
Kilkenny River Court Hotel
Kilkenny River Court Hotel
47
29 Spiritualized
& support 8pm
Theatre/Dance
31 MEET THE ARTISTS The
Dresden Group 10.30pm
5 Entanglement Witness
2pm-6pm
The Maltings
COLOUR GUIDE
45 Rabih Alameddine &
Andrew Sean Greer 6pm
30 Dae Kim & House of Cosy 30 Somadrome &
Cushions 9pm
Supernova Scotia 9pm
23 Terje Isungset 8pm
22 Hayes & Cahill 9pm
Hotel Kilkenny
VISUAL ART VENUES
8 Zone of Silence 8pm
(& Post-Show Meet
the Artists)
13 John Williams 8pm
30 Halves &
A Safe Dry Place 9pm
31 MEET THE ARTISTS
Lisa Hannigan 7pm
7 The End 6pm
24 Savina Yannatou 8.30pm 14 The Dresden Group
1.10pm Concert 2
11 Camerata Kilkenny 7.30pm
UPSTAIRS BAR AT
MORRISSON’S
THE HIBERNIAN HOTEL
SUNDAY 17
50 Simon Patterson 3pm
Brian Hand 7pm
Castle Grounds
KILKENNY CASTLE
CLEERE’S
SATURDAY 16
4 Baladeu’x 12.30pm, 5pm 4 Cirque Bijou 12.30pm,
2.30pm & 4.30pm
4 Musical Ruth 12.30pm,
4 Bread & Butter 12.30pm,
2.30pm & 4.30pm
2.30pm & 4.30pm
3 Invisible Men 2.30pm, 4pm
10 Andreas Scholl &
38 Deirdre Madden
Crawford Young: 8.15pm
& Yiyun Li 1.10pm
FRIDAY 15
3 Physical Jerks
12.30pm, 2.30pm &
4.30pm
2 Hélios II, 9.15pm
ST CANICE’S
CATHEDRAL
THURSDAY 14
8 Being Harold Pinter 8pm
(& Post-Show Meet
the Artists)
3 The Sneakers 12.30pm,
2.30pm & 4pm
27 Lisa Hannigan 3.30pm
WEDNESDAY 13
8 Generation Jeans 8pm
(& Post-Show Meet
the Artists)
3 Big Beat 12.30pm,
2.30pm & 4.30pm
37 Sebastian Barry &
Francisco Goldman 6pm
TUESDAY 12
5 Mimic 6pm (& Post-Show 5 Mimic 6pm
Meet the Artists)
STREET
(MacDONAGH JUNCTION
& STREETS OF KILKENNY)
PARADE TOWER
MONDAY 11
Mary McIntyre
Richard Mosse
Mark Garry
Keith Wilson
Phyllida Barlow
Dougal McKenzie
Brian Hand
Simon Patterson
STRAND 2
51 BUTLER GALLERY
51 NATIONAL CRAFT GALLERY
52 KILKENNY COUNTY COUNCIL
52 KCAT
52 SCULPTURE AT KELLS
End of Festival Party!
Langtons 9.30pm
All welcome. Adm €8
Wired
Visual Art
VERGE
53
53
54
54
RUDOLF HELTZEL GALLERY
CASTLECOMER ESTATE YARD
GRENNAN MILL CRAFT SCHOOL
CERAMICS IRELAND
55 ROSS STEWART
55 ROBERT DUNNE
55 TRACY SWEENEY
PLEASE TURN OFF
YOUR MOBILE
PHONE DURING
PERFORMANCES
34 w children’s day-by-day
Theatre/
Performance
film w 35
Music/
Storytelling
Visual Art
Workshops
Sat 9
56
Snow White b/w Age 6-10 yrs
2pm & 4pm
CBS Primary School
Sun 10
56
Snow White b/w Age 6-10 yrs
4pm
CBS Primary School
Mon 11
56
Moussa’s Castle 2-5 yrs
11.30am, 1.30pm & 3.30pm
CBS Primary School
59
Mini-Me Age 4-6 yrs
Workshop 1: 2pm - 3pm
Workshop 2: 4pm - 5pm
National Craft Gallery, Castle Yard
Tues 12
56
Moussa’s Castle 2-5 yrs
11.30am, 1.30pm & 3.30pm
CBS Primary School
59
Festival Flags 9-12 yrs
Two-day workshop
10.30am - 12.30pm
VEC Arts Space
Wed 13
Thur 14
56
Moussa’s Castle 2-5 yrs
11.30am & 1.30pm
CBS Primary School
57
Circus INcognitus
All ages & their families
4pm & 7pm
The Watergate Theatre
57
Circus INcognitus
All ages & their families
1pm & 4pm
The Watergate Theatre
Fri 15
Sat 16
58 Clare Muireann Murphy 3-6 yrs
2pm & 4pm
CBS Primary School
Sun 17
58 Glee
For families with children aged from 5 yrs
2pm & 4pm
Lyrath Estate Hotel
59
Puppet Play 7-9 yrs
2.30pm - 4.30pm
VEC Arts Space
59
Festival Flags 9-12 yrs
Two-day workshop
10.30am - 12.30pm
VEC Arts Space
59
Puppet Play Age 7-9 yrs
2.30pm - 4.30pm
VEC Arts Space
59
Paint the Music
Workshop 1 (4-6 yrs) 11am - 12 noon
Workshop 2 (7-9 yrs) 2pm - 3.15pm
Workshop 3 (10-12 yrs) 4.15pm - 5.30pm
Castlecomer Discovery Park
59
Window Art Age 4-6 yrs
Workshop 1: 10.30am - 11.30am
Workshop 2: 12.30pm - 1.30pm
VEC Arts Space
CHILDREN UNDER 12 YEARS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT AT ALL TIMES TO ALL PERFORMANCE EVENTS.
3epkano (Ireland)
LIVE MUSIC ACCOMPANIMENT
TO CLASSIC FILMS
THE CAT AND THE CANARY
Festival favourites, Dublin-based music ensemble 3epkano specialise in
producing original and innovative soundtracks for films from the silent movie
era. Critically acclaimed for their headline shows in Ireland and the US,
3epkano have also been commissioned to produce new music for such
prestigious institutions as the National Gallery of Ireland, the Film Society of
Lincoln Center and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.
SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS
The Cat and the Canary
Two-film ticket package €26
Saturday 16 August
6pm
Sunday 17 August
2.30pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €16/€13
(1927) DIR. PAUL LENI
One of the “Old House” brand of thrillers,
this classic centres on young Anabelle West,
who is set to inherit a fortune from her
eccentric relative, if she can prove she is sane
and avoid the cat-like clutches of a murderous
killer. German Paul Leni’s first American
assignment, the action of this slick chiller
is restricted, its effect deriving more from
atmosphere than melodrama. A stage
derivation with a marked comedic content,
it remains a chilling horror from Universal,
the stronghold of the genre.
Sunrise: A Song of
Two Humans
(1927) DIR. FW MURNAU
Widely regarded as Murnau’s greatest film,
this love story tells of a hard-up farmer
whose affair with a city girl leads him to the
brink of killing his doting wife. Displaying a
keen sense of the possibilities of camera
movement, Murnau used superimpositions
and tracking shots to great effect, most
famously in the tram scene, offering a sense
of space and place that few other filmmakers
had by then achieved.
3epkano premiered both of these new scores
in New York, July 2008.
MATTHEW NOLAN
CAMERON DOYLE
electric guitar
JAMES MACKEN
drums/percussion
RICHARD McCULLOUGH
keyboards/organ
LAURENCE MACKEN
bass guitar
LIOBA PETRIE
cello
KAREN DERVAN
viola
“mesmerising”
THE IRISH TIMES
“an unmissable visual
and aural experience”
FILM IRELAND
PROGRAMME
Widely regarded as one of the greatest
actors in the history of Irish theatre, film
and television, Donal McCann’s prolific
career spanned 30 years and included
well-loved roles in Juno and the
Paycock, The Plough and the Stars and
Strumpet City, as well as his last and
perhaps most renowned role as Thomas
Dunne, The Steward of Christendom.
10.00am Introduction by
Colm Tóibín
10.10am It Must Be
Done Right
11.00am December Bride
This season of films has been selected
by Colm Tóibín, as a tribute to one of
Ireland’s finest actors, whose premature
death in 1999 left a great void in Irish
artistic life.
BREAK 12.45pm - 1.30pm
It Must Be Done Right
1.30pm
1.45pm
3.20pm
Christmas Day
by Paul Durcan
The Dead
Philadelphia,
Here I Come!
Programme presented
by Kilkenny Arts Festival
in association with the
Irish Film Institute.
(1998) DIR. BOB QUINN
In this interview with Gerry Stembridge
at the Galway Film Fleadh in 1998,
Donal McCann speaks honestly,
passionately and with great wit of
his life as an actor, from his beginnings
on the stage at Terenure College, to
his final role as The Steward of
Christendom.
December Bride
(1990) DIR. THADDEUS O’SULLIVAN
Sarah continues to work for two
bachelor brothers after their father dies,
literature w 37
Sebastian Barry
(IRELAND)
A native of Dublin, Sebastian Barry’s plays include Boss Grady’s Boys
(1988), The Steward of Christendom (1995), Our Lady of Sligo (1998) and
The Pride of Parnell Street (2007). His novels include The Whereabouts of
Eneas McNulty (1998), Annie Dunne (2002) and A Long Long Way (2005),
and he has won, among other awards, the Irish-America Fund Literary
Award, the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize, the London Critics Circle Award and
the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize. A Long Long Way, which was short-listed
for the Man Booker Prize and the Dublin International Impac Prize, was the
Dublin: One City One Book choice for 2007. He lives in Wicklow.
to the disquiet of all in her small,
rural community in late 19th century
Northern Ireland. Further scandal follows
when she becomes pregnant and rears
the child on her own. From the novel
by Sam Hanna Bell.
Paul Durcan
One of Ireland’s most distinctive poets
will read two excerpts from his poem
Christmas Day, about his close friend
Donal McCann.
The Dead
(1987) DIR. JOHN HUSTON
COURTESY OF THE IRISH TIMES
Saturday 16 August
From 10am
Kilkenny Cineplex,
Fair Green
Admission €16/€13 (full day)
€11/€8 (2 films)
Donal
McCann
on Screen
BOB QUINN
36 w film
(1975) DIR. JOHN QUESTED
Repressed young Gar O’Donnell debates
with his extrovert alter ego, Gar Private,
whether he should leave the depressing
environment of his home town and
emigrate to Philadelphia. Adapted
from Brian Friel’s masterpiece.
“Sebastian Barry’s fiction is
unique, and it is magnificent”
FRANK McGUINNESS
FOR A LONG, LONG WAY:
“hypnotically lyrical and
vividly immediate”
THE GUARDIAN
Friday 8 August
6pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €13/€11
From the short story by James Joyce.
Set in early 20th century Dublin at
an Epiphany party, academic Gabriel
Conroy discovers his wife’s memory
of a deceased lover.
Philadelphia,
Here I Come!
SEBASTIAN BARRY:
Francisco Goldman
(US)
Francisco Goldman’s novels include The Long Night of White Chickens
(1998), winner of the Sue Kaufman Award for First Fiction from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters; The Ordinary Seaman (1998),
International IMPAC Dublin Fiction Prize finalist, the Los Angeles Times Book
Prize and the PEN/Faulkner award; and The Divine Husband (2004). His nonfiction work The Art of Political Murder: Who killed the Bishop? (2007), won
the 2008 TR Fyvel Freedom of Expression Book Award. A former fellow at
the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, he is a
member of the executive board of American PEN and is the Allan K Smith
Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Trinity College in Connecticut.
FRANCISCO GOLDMAN
FOR THE ART OF POLITICAL MURDER:
“intricate and insightful”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
“a passionate cry of outrage”
THE WASHINGTON POST
RANDI LYNN BEACH
38 w literature
literature w 39
James Ryan
(IRELAND)
Saturday 9 August
1.10pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €13/€11
DEIRDRE MADDEN
“a beautiful novel”
FRANK McGUINNESS
“a novel of great subtlety,
beauty and strength. She is
one of our finest writers”
ANNE ENRIGHT
YIYUN LI:
“A truly fine writer”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
“one perfectly realised gem
after the next”
WASHINGTON POST
Deirdre
Madden
Yiyun
Li
(IRELAND)
(CHINA & US)
Deirdre Madden is the author of six
novels, including Hidden Symptoms
(1986), The Birds of Innocent Wood
(1988), winner of the Somerset
Maugham Award, One by One in
the Darkness (1996), which was
short-listed for the Orange Prize,
Authenticity (2002), Thanks for
Telling Me, Emily (2007) and,
most recently, Molly Fox’s Birthday
(2008). Among her many other
awards are the Hennessy Literary
Award and the Rooney Prize for
Irish Literature. Deirdre previously
appeared at Kilkenny Arts Festival
in 2006, reading her children’s
novel Snakes’ Elbows (2005).
Originally from Toomebridge,
County Antrim, Deirdre currently
teaches at Trinity College Dublin
and is a member of Aosdána.
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing. Her
debut collection, A Thousand Years
of Good Prayers (2006), won the
Frank O’Connor International Short
Story Award, the PEN/Hemingway
Award, the Guardian First Book
Award, the California Book Award for
First Fiction and was short-listed for
the Orange Prize for New Writers
and the Kiriyama Prize. The film
adaptation, A Thousand Years of
Good Prayers, recently won the
Golden Shell Award for Best Film at
the San Sebastian International Film
Festival. Yiyun’s novel, The Vagrants,
will be published in February 2009.
She lives in California with her
husband and their two sons.
Kilkenny Arts Festival is delighted
to welcome Yiyun to her first
appearance in Ireland.
Sunday 10 August
1.10pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €13/€11
JAMES RYAN
FOR SEEDS OF DOUBT:
“This is a fine, heartfelt
novel…. observant and
moving”
JOHN BANVILLE
FOR SOUTH OF THE BORDER
“engrossing…vivid detail”
Ross Raisin
(UK)
Born in West Yorkshire, Ross Raisin
graduated with a first from King’s College,
London in 2002 and completed an MA in
Creative Writing at Goldsmiths in 2004. He
lives in London. God’s Own Country, his first
novel, introduces the unpredictable and
deeply unsettling narrator Sam Marsdyke,
the teenage son of a farmer on the
Yorkshire Moors, who is at the heart of this
extraordinary work. The power of this novel
“springs from the tension between the
coherence and conviction of Sam’s inner
voice and his increasingly erratic
behaviour” (The Telegraph). God’s Own
Country is funny, darkly menacing and
lingers long after the final page.
EAMONN McCABE
FOR MOLLY FOX’S BIRTHDAY:
James Ryan is a native of Rathdowney,
County Laois, and a graduate of Trinity
College, Dublin. He is a writer and university
lecturer at the School of English and Drama,
University College Dublin. His previous
novels include Home from England (1995),
Dismantling Mr Doyle (1997) and Seeds of
Doubt (2001). His most recent work, South
of the Border (2008), is a nuanced comingof-age story, which evokes “Emergency
Ireland” and rehearses the inner narrative
of neutrality as public perception contends
with private experience, bringing the reader
into the heart of the experience that was
wartime Ireland.
IRISH INDEPENDENT
ROSS RAISIN
“Here is a novel worth
celebrating… rich, fullblooded and vividly voiced”
THE IRISH TIMES
“Chilling in its effect and
convincing in its execution”
JM COETZEE
40 w literature
Monday 11 August
6pm
Hotel Kilkenny
Admission €13/€11
Two-ticket package: €28 for this
event and Hayes & Cahill (p.22)
Dr Sean
Crosson
Dr William
Murphy
The GAA & the Creation
of Modern Ireland
SYMPOSIUM
Summertime in Kilkenny means one thing for local people: hurling. The
passion, the analysis, the news - it’s all part of life here in the home of the
reigning All-Ireland champions. But the GAA on a national scale has played a
huge part in Irish society since its foundation in 1884. How has this all-island
voluntary organisation influenced the social, political and cultural
development of Irish life? Why is it so important to Irish people? What would
we be without it? To examine these and other questions, the festival is
pleased to welcome some of the leading writers and researchers on the GAA
in Ireland today. In addition, there will be a unique opportunity to view some
rare, pre-RTÉ hurling footage from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Dr Sean Crosson: Lecturer with the Huston School of Film & Digital Media
at NUI, Galway; Researching the history of the representation of Gaelic
games in film.
Dr William Murphy: Lecturer in Irish Studies at Mater Dei Institute of
Education, DCU; Co-founder of Sports History Ireland; Researching the GAA
and the Irish revolution; Member of Monagea GAA, Co. Limerick.
PM O’Sullivan: Native of Ballyhale, South Kilkenny; Studied English at UCD
and the University of Oxford; Journalist living in Kilkenny.
PM
O’Sullivan
literature w 41
Dr Paul Rouse: Lecturer at School of History & Archives at UCD; Director of
InQuest Research Group; Has written extensively on the GAA; Member of the
Irish Journalist of the Year 2003 award-winning Prime Time Investigates team.
(Chair) Catriona Crowe: Senior Archivist at the National Archives of Ireland;
Project Manager of Irish Census Online; Supporter of Clare hurling team.
Tuesday 12 August
6pm
St Canice’s Cathedral
Admission €13/€11
The Hubert Butler Annual Lecture
Jon Lee Anderson (US)
“AMERICA AT WAR”
Jon Lee Anderson is one of the finest journalists working in the world today.
He has written some of the most searing and penetrating reports from the
frontline in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. He has also reported from Liberia,
Angola, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, and has written numerous profiles
of political leaders, including Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Augusto Pinochet,
Gabriel García Márquez, King Juan Carlos, Hamid Karzai and Jalal Talabani.
Anderson is the author of several books, including Che Guevara: A
Revolutionary Life; The Lion’s Grave: Dispatches From Afghanistan; Guerrillas:
Journeys in the Insurgent World and, most recently, The Fall of Baghdad. He is
the co-author, with Scott Anderson, of War Zones: Voices from the World’s
Killing Grounds and Inside the League.
Dr Paul
Rouse
Beginning his career in 1979 as a reporter for the Lima Times in Peru, he
reported on Central America’s civil wars for Time magazine during the 1980s
and went on to cover the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Uganda, Western
Sahara, Sri Lanka, Burma, Israel and Bosnia. He has been writing for The New
Yorker magazine since 1998.
Catriona
Crowe
For this lecture, Jon Lee Anderson will speak about the US military campaigns
in Afghanistan and Iraq and their political context. As one of the most astute
observers of tactics and policy, and one of the bravest reporters in the field,
Jon Lee Anderson is one of the most passionate and lucid witnesses to the
actual events in these two countries as they unfold.
Jon Lee Anderson will be introduced by television and radio broadcaster Olivia
O’Leary, who has presented programmes on RTÉ, the BBC and ITV for the last
three decades.
The Hubert Butler Annual
Lecture was established in
2007 to honour the Kilkenny
writer, historian and
broadcaster whose
remarkable consistency of
vision and clarity of mind
made him unique among
Irish essayists and whose
work evinced an
unsurpassed moral, political
and literary integrity.
42 w literature
literature w 43
Anne Enright
(IRELAND)
“Enthralling… Reckless
intelligence, savage
humour, slow revelation,
no consolation: ... jet dark
- but how it glitters”
NEW YORK TIMES
PATRICK McGRATH
FOR TRAUMA:
“Beautifully crafted
and paced”
THE WASHINGTON POST
“a haunting story…
beautifully articulated”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thursday 14 August
6pm
The Heritage Council/
Áras na hOidhreachta,
Church Lane
Admission €13/€11
JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY
ANNE ENRIGHT:
A Dublin native, Anne Enright studied creative
writing at the University of East Anglia, and
worked for many years as a TV producer and
director in Ireland. Her novels include The Wig
My Father Wore (1995), What Are You Like
(2000), which won the Encore Award and was
short-listed for the Whitbread Novel Award,
The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002) and The
Gathering (2007), which won the 2007 Man
Booker Prize. She has published two collections
of stories, The Portable Virgin (1991), winner
of the Rooney Prize, and her latest collection,
Taking Pictures (2008). She also published a
non-fiction work, Making Babies: Stumbling
into Motherhood (2004). She is married to
the actor Martin Murphy and lives in Dublin.
Patrick
McGrath
(UK)
Patrick McGrath is the author of two story
collections and seven novels, including Dr
Haggard’s Disease (1993), Asylum (1996),
which was short-listed for the Whitbread and
Guardian fiction prizes, Martha Peake: A Novel
of the Revolution (2000), winner of Italy’s
Premio Flaiano Prize, Port Mungo (2004), Ghost
Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now
(2005) and his latest novel, Trauma (July,
2008). He has adapted two of his novels for
the screen: Spider, directed by David
Cronenberg, and his first novel, The Grotesque.
Patrick is also the co-editor of a collection of
short fiction, The New Gothic. He is married
to the actor and director Maria Aitken and
lives in New York.
MARION ETTLINGER
Wednesday 13 August
6pm
Newpark Hotel
Admission €13/€11
FOR WHITE SAVAGE:
“accomplished and
supremely readable”
Fintan O’Toole (IRELAND)
THE SUNDAY TIMES
Long Night’s Journey Into Day:
Eugene O’Neill and Kilkenny
THE GUARDIAN
Eugene O’Neill was the first great American playwright. His achievement
was, in part, the working out of a psychological legacy inherited from his
father, James O’Neill who was born in Kilkenny and was a major figure in
his own right, the 19th century equivalent of a Hollywood star. But he
was haunted by his origins in Famine-era Kilkenny. The literal hunger of
his childhood drove him to prostitute his talent for money and shaped his
son’s long struggle through anger, shame and self-hatred towards a final
settling of accounts. Fintan O’Toole argues that this journey makes
O’Neill’s origins more than a matter of parochial interest. It represents
perhaps the most profound working-out in world literature of the longterm legacy of horror and hunger.
Fintan O’Toole is assistant editor of The Irish Times, and has been drama
critic of that paper, In Dublin, The Sunday Tribune and the New York Daily
News. His most recent books are White Savage: William Johnson and the
Invention of America and (with Shane Hegarty) The Irish Times Book of
the 1916 Rising.
“wonderful”
44 w literature
literature w 45
Rabih
Andrew
Alameddine Sean Greer
Harry Clifton
(IRELAND)
Friday 15 August
6pm
Kikenny Ormonde Hotel
Admission €13/€11
Harry Clifton’s collections of poems include The Liberal Cage (1988), The
Desert Route: Selected Poems 1973–1988 (1992), Le Canto d’Ulysse (1996),
his selected poems in French, and his newest volume, Secular Eden: Paris
Notebooks 1994-2004 (2007), which won the 2008 Irish Times Poetry Now
Award. His many other awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award and two
Arts Council Bursaries in Literature. He was an International Fellow at Iowa
University and has been Poet-in-Residence at The Frost Place, New
Hampshire. He returned to Ireland in 2004 and now teaches at University
College Dublin. He is a member of Aosdána.
HARRY CLIFTON
FOR SECULAR EDEN:
“dazzlingly accomplished”
THE IRISH TIMES
“A splendidly rich book”
CK WILLIAMS
(LEBANON)
(US)
Rabih Alameddine was born in
Jordan to Lebanese parents.
Reviewing his latest novel, The
Hakawati (2008) the New York Times
stated “The stunning creative drive in
The Hakawati…can be almost
overwhelming. It’s bracing to come
upon a work - and a world - that
expands our narrow vision,
transforming it to one of multiplicity,
enchanting it with hope”.
Alameddine is the author of two
previous novels, Koolaids (1998) and
I, the Divine (2001), as well as The
Perv (1999), a book of stories.
He is the recipient of a Guggenheim
fellowship and lives in San Francisco
and Beirut.
Andrew Sean Greer is the author of
How It Was For Me (2000), a
collection of short stories, The Path
of Minor Planets (2001) and the
bestselling The Confessions of Max
Tivoli (2004), which John Updike
first put on the literary map when
he called it “enchanting, in the
perfumed, dandified style of
disenchantment brought to grandeur
by Proust and Nabokov”. Greer’s
latest novel, The Story of a
Marriage, was published this year.
He has won the California Book
Award, the Northern California Book
Award and the New York Public
Library Young Lions Award. He lives
in San Francisco.
Sunday 17 August
6pm
The Parade Tower,
Kilkenny Castle
Admission €13/€11
RABIH ALAMEDDINE
FOR THE HAKAWATI:
“A glorious,
gorgeous masterpiece”
AMY TAN
“storytelling ingenuity…
a novel on a royal scale”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
RUTH PADEL:
ANDREW SEAN GREER:
“Elegant rich lines,
teeming with splendour”
“inspired, lyrical novel”
PAUL DURCAN
Ruth Padel
“beautiful and
moving… devastating”
(UK)
Ruth Padel started out as a Hellenist, and has since published several
collections of poetry, including Alibi (1985), Summer Snow (1990), Angel
(1993), Fusewire (1996), Rembrandt Would Have Loved You (1998), Voodoo
Shop (2002) and The Soho Leopard (2004), which was shortlisted for the TS
Eliot Prize. Her poem Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire won the National
Poetry Competition (UK) in 1996. Ruth also writes on reading poetry, music
and conservation. She is a great-great-grand-daughter of Charles Darwin,
and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Zoological Society
of London. She is currently Poet-in-Residence at Somerset House, London.
KHALED HOSSEINI
HENRY DOMBEY
“Passion, wit, music,
texture and elegance”
NEW YORK TIMES
ELENA SEIBERT
FINANCIAL TIMES
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visual art w 47
Visual Art at
Kilkenny Arts
Festival 2008
Mary McIntyre
Richard Mosse
Mark Garry
Keith Wilson
Phyllida Barlow
Dougal McKenzie
Friday 8 - Sunday 17 August
10am-6pm
Various locations
Brian Hand
Thursday 14 - Sunday 17 August
7pm
Kilkenny Castle Grounds
Simon Patterson
Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 August
3pm-4.30pm
Kilkenny Castle Grounds
HUGH MULHOLLAND, CURATOR
I am delighted to have been invited again to curate the visual art
element of Kilkenny Arts Festival. This year, I am presenting a
collection of artists’ works which range from sculpture and painting
to photography, video, audio and dramatic live events. In Rothe
House, the emphasis is on sculpture, with three complementary
artists occupying one floor. Phyllida Barlow, Keith Wilson and Mark
Garry each question the nature and role of the sculptural object in
contemporary culture, experimenting with unexpected
combinations of materials, creating objects and environments
which encourage us to see the everyday world with fresh eyes.
In St John’s Priory, Mary McIntyre, recognised internationally for her
atmospheric photographic practice, creates a contemplative audio
work where self-doubt, so prevalent within the human condition,
is unrelentingly expressed. Dougal McKenzie’s paintings in Butler
House investigate history and narrative, using imagery from
holiday slides taken by McKenzie’s maternal grandparents on trips
to the USSR and Romania in the early 1970s.
There is also an element of spectacle to this year’s programme,
with Simon Patterson’s work Landskip staged in the grounds of
Kilkenny Castle, evoking the spirit of elaborate outdoor events of
the 17th and 18th centuries, which were often designed by artists.
Meanwhile, Brian Hand’s spectacular new work Little War, a cocommission with the Butler Gallery, takes us back to the 19th
century with an authentic Victorian Carousel. Richard Mosse’s work
also speaks of spectacle, but an altogether darker one. Using video
footage of US troops wounded in Iraq, taken at the Walter Reed
Veterans Hospital in Washington DC, Mosse explores the
contradictory nature of modern warfare.
Mary
McIntyre
St John’s Priory
John Street
(NORTHERN
IRELAND)
My Death
Self-doubt, so prevalent within the human condition, is unrelentingly
expressed in the new audio work by artist Mary McIntyre. A male narrator
gives voice to a series of thoughts that usually go unspoken. The narrator
speaks with alarming self-awareness as he accuses himself of a litany of
flaws. The less negative attributes are dispersed amidst the body of the
text, but it is the narrator’s shortcomings that dominate this sound work.
One can readily identify with the individual’s failings as he lists out loud an
inner dialogue of self-reflection that resonates with the listener. This work
speaks directly to us and may even give voice to our own inner thoughts in
a sparse repetitiveness reminiscent of Beckett.
Richard Mosse
(IRELAND)
Trainers
The gift of modernity is the military industrial
complex. We live in a state of fear brought on by our
technologies, by the speed at which we expect to
live our lives. How can a society expect to heal
wounded soldiers through competitive shoot-em-up
battle simulators? What purpose do our airports’
spectacular air disaster simulators serve, except
as monuments to our own palpable sense of fear?
In a search for alternate strategies for representing
the disaster, the artist was struck by two separate
but related moments which reveal the simulated
experience of an inflated society of the spectacle.
The Heritage Council/
Áras na hOidhreachta
Church Lane
48 w visual art
visual art w 49
Rothe House
Parliament Street
Mark Garry
Phyllida Barlow
(IRELAND)
(UK)
Mark Garry is fundamentally interested in
how humans navigate the world and the
subjectivity inherent in these navigations.
While Mark uses a variety of media and
mechanisms in his practice, he primarily
focuses on gallery-based installations.
These site-specific installations incorporate
a range of natural and craft materials such
as thread, beads, coloured paper, origami,
plants and mechanical musical mechanisms.
These installations combine physical, visual,
sensory and empathetic analogues, creating
arrangements of elements that intersect
the space and relate to each individual
physical space and each other.
Phyllida Barlow makes large scale installations
and single objects. The space in which the work is
located determines its form and placement. Her
work incorporates an enormous range of massproduced materials including cardboard, fabric,
paper, glue, paint, plastic, wood, rubber,
hardboard and adhesive tape. Colour is important
and the surfaces can be left in their raw state or
thickly covered in paint so that the work situates
itself between sculpture and painting.
Keith Wilson
(UK)
Keith Wilson is an artist best known for his playful
interventions into the fabric of everyday life, appropriating
familiar domestic or industrial objects - wardrobes, shelving,
fire-grates, cattle pens - often in a subtly humorous way.
Wilson’s recent works take the form of upright pillars which
make reference to prayer sticks or the grave markers found in
Oriental graveyards. The artist discovered the ‘stele’ form
through the process of rolling hot metal rods into flat
‘spatulas’, which brought to mind ancient Chinese stone
‘steles’ engraved with calligraphy. They are painted in brilliant
orange, red and brown hues using an industrial Elastemer
paint, which gives strong, pure colour but with a soft, rubbery
surface which reflects light and blurs the edges of the forms.
Rothe House
Parliament Street
Rothe House
Parliament Street
Dougal McKenzie
(UK)
Dougal McKenzie’s paintings in Butler
House investigate history and narrative,
using imagery from holiday slides taken
by McKenzie’s maternal grandparents on
trips to the USSR and Romania in the
early 1970s. McKenzie projects sections of
the original slides as circular compositions
within a square. As with history, this
reformatting of the imagery inevitably
leaves some things out, focusing on only
part of the image. The original images
might be regarded as simple holiday
snapshots. However, taken as they were
by his grandfather, a keen amateur
photographer who won prizes in the
Edinburgh Leith Dock’s Camera Club, they
might be regarded as more than that:
pictures that operate as both mementos
and documents.
Butler House
Patrick Street
Atsushi Kaga
Atsushi Kaga makes drawings, paintings and animations
that include self-portraits of his alter ego, Bunny, his
panda father and kangaroo mother, and a host of
reappearing symbolic characters. Behind the playful and
surreal façade of Kaga’s misleadingly simple and fauxcrude works, there lurk much darker issues of cultural
politics and personal identity. Kaga’s razor-sharp humour
and extraordinary imagination take the viewer, willingly,
on a journey of exploration through a dark, complex and
often brutal - but very funny - world.
Kilkenny Castle Grounds
Thursday 14 - Sunday 17 August
7pm
Meet the Artist: Sat 16th, 10pm
Upstairs Bar at Morrisson’s (See p.31)
Brian Hand (IRELAND)
Little War is a new installation by Brian Hand. It is a large-scale visual
experience. An authentic Victorian Carousel becomes a purple, white
and green time machine that enters into a dialogue with the ghost
world of militant politics by women in these islands before World War
One and the fictional life of Mary Poppins. It is a circular work that
blends the past and present while spinning on horseback in mid-air
towards the future.
A co-commission between Kilkenny Arts Festival & the Butler Gallery.
Kilkenny Castle Grounds
Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 August
3pm-4.30pm
Simon Patterson (UK)
Landskip
Simon Patterson’s work Landskip is a re-staging of a work
originally commissioned for Compton Verney House, Warwickshire
in 2000. The title Landskip derives from an 18th-century English
rendering of ‘Landscape’. Patterson took his inspiration for the
work in its original location from the grounds laid out by the
famous 18th-century English landscape gardener, Lancelot
‘Capability’ Brown (1716-83), and the fact that during the Second
World War, it was a secret location used by the Army for, amongst
other things, smoke-screen tests. When Patterson recreates the
work in other locations, his intention is much more about drawing
attention to the landscape itself and specific vistas. The effect is
intended to be like a landscape painting, with smudges of added
colour. The ephemerality of smoke underscores the transience of
the supposedly timeless and natural landscape.
Courtesy mother’s tankstation, Dublin
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strand 2
BUTLER GALLERY
Kilkenny Castle
9 August - 5 October
10am-6pm daily (Aug-Sept)
10.30am-12.45pm,
2pm-5pm (Oct)
Atsushi Kaga is a Japanese artist living and working in Dublin, where he
graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2005. Kaga is
represented by mother’s tankstation, Dublin.
Brian Hand
The Butler Gallery has co-commissioned, with Kilkenny Arts Festival, the
Little War installation by Brian Hand, at Kilkenny Castle. (See opposite page.)
Image of Longing
Honouring the inspirational.
Leading artists create new
work for those who have
inspired them.
NATIONAL CRAFT
GALLERY
Muses, mentors and heroes: Image of Longing at the National Craft Gallery is
about paying tribute through the medium of beautifully considered craft.
Late last year, leading craftspeople were asked to make a work of art for a
person or organisation that inspires them. The 27 people in this exhibition
were selected for their work, their motivation and their source of inspiration.
Castle Yard, Kilkenny
9 August - 5 October
Mon - Sat, 10am-6pm
Sun, 11am-6pm
Curators’ and Artists’ talk:
Sunday 10 August, 11.30am
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strand 2
KILKENNY COUNTY COUNCIL
No. 72 John Street
4 August - 12 September
Mon - Fri, 9am-1pm & 2pm-5pm
Sat & Sun, 11am-5pm
KCAT
KCAT Arts Centre, Mill Lane, Callan
8 - 17 August, 10am-4pm daily
Peer-to-Peer
visual art w 53
RUDOLF HELTZEL GALLERY
strand 2
Cormac Boydell
This is the culmination of a portrait
project involving the artists and
mentors at KCAT (Kilkenny Collective
for Arts Talent). In an environment
where the learning between mentor
and studio artist goes both ways, this
exhibition visually highlights all those
involved. Each artist picked their
subject’s name from a hat. With no
restrictions on method or materials, the work
produced includes print, paint, woodcut, stitch,
sculpture and collage. An integral part of the
process was the free-flowing interaction between
each artist and subject, communicating styles
and intentions for their work.
“My purpose in making work for the precisely-lit and self-contained
worlds of the jewellery cases in the Heltzel Gallery is to present a
view of the ordinary as extraordinary.
My inspiration arises from the materials themselves and from the
artifacts of civilizations, both ancient and parallel to our own”.
10 Patrick Street
8 - 17 August
Mon - Sat, 9.30am-1pm
2pm-5.30pm
Sun, 2pm-5pm
Cormac Boydell trained as a
geologist and has been working as
a full-time professional artist since
1983. He lives beside the Atlantic
Ocean and the process of making
and the nature of matter are
central to his art.
Neil Butler
New World Symphonies:
Journey’s End
Neil Butler studied fine art at the
Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork
and the Byam Shaw at Central Saint
Martins, London. Through his painting
Neil tries to make sense of visual culture
by deconstructing the visual narratives
we are surrounded by and reinvesting
them with meaning and significance. He
takes an image out of its original
context and, through methods of ‘cut
and paste’ and reframing, he strips it of
its original ‘meaning’ and invests it with
a new one within the context of a
painted object, through isolation, forced
juxtaposition and repetition. An
obsessive collector, he steals images and
text from everywhere and it is from this
archive that he forms his narrative
works. www.neilbutler.co.uk
SCULPTURE AT KELLS
Kells Priory, Kells, Co Kilkenny
10 - 17 August
Poet: Kerry Hardie (Ireland)
Visual Artists: Saturio Alonso (Spain/Ireland),
Maria Kerin (Ireland), Aileen Lambert (Ireland)
Ann Mulrooney (Ireland), Michael Quane RHA (Ireland)
This year marks the 10th anniversary
of this annual exhibition of sculpture
in the remarkable ruins of Kells
Priory. It also marks a development
from previous years, featuring two
artists-in-residence who have created
and installed works developed
through extended engagement with
the Priory and with the local
community. Also participating are a
poet and three artists of national and
international repute who have
created works specifically for this
location. This year’s exhibition will be
truly site-specific in response to a
complex and beautiful environment
and its cosmological resonance.
Curator: Alan Counihan
CASTLECOMER ESTATE YARD
8 - 17 August
10am-5pm
Estate Yard Art ’08
Estate Yard Art ’08 is an exhibition of recent work
by some of the foremost artists and craftspeople
currently in Kilkenny. Situated in the Castlecomer
Estate Yard, County Kilkenny, the beautifully
restored stables are working studios of Rachel
Burke, painting, Polly Minnett, papermaking,
Ruairí Carroll, sculpture, Andrew Luddick, ceramics,
Maeve Coulter, textiles and Ross Stewart, visual
art, as well as potters, jewellers and more. See
these well-known and emerging artists’ latest work
and explore the creative processes behind them.
Meet the artists in their studios and find out more
about their craft. You can also seize the opportunity
to explore the Castlecomer Discovery Park with insitu environmental art tucked away along the
forest pathways.
54 w visual art
strand 2
GRENNAN MILL
Grennan Mill Craft School
8 - 17 August
10am-6pm
Ross Stewart
Kozo Studio and Gallery, Thomastown
8 August - 8 September
10am-6pm daily
Sound Off
VERGE
“Sound Off is a provocative, cynical look at protestors
and the use of protests and marches to highlight various
causes or injustices in the world. The 10 protestors
depicted in this exhibition are fighting for nothing that
you or I have seen before; some dangerously inciteful,
some silly, some disturbing”.
A partnership between Kilkenny
County Council Arts Office and
Kilkenny Arts Festival, the VERGE
initiative seeks to provide a
platform for emerging visual
artists and makers, born or
living in Kilkenny, to exhibit their
work as part of the festival. This
is the fifth year of this highly
successful initiative and we are
delighted to include these artists
in the 2008 programme.
Ceramics Ireland
Dylan Vaughan
“The work I’m exhibiting consists of mainly abstract and
landscape images along with some portraits. This
exhibition is a great opportunity to show a body of work
which is different to the type of photography that I do for
the many media outlets that I work for”.
Dylan Vaughan is a well-established press and commercial
photographer based in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, who
covers the south-east of Ireland for all national and many
international publications and public relations agencies.
The Ceramics Ireland International Festival
presents an exhibition of visiting ceramic artists.
This powerful exhibition of visual drama, form
and colour features the work of Jason Walker
(USA); Frances Lambe (Ire); Jim Robison (UK);
Kira Campbell (USA); Jim Turner (Ire) and Mike
Dodd (UK). A unique opportunity to experience a
dynamic and diverse range of ceramic practice.
The exhibition is an integral part of the Ceramics
Ireland International Festival, which takes place
at the Pottery Skills School, Thomastown, from
5 - 7 September, during which the exhibiting
artists will demonstrate their skills.
www.ceramicsireland.org
10 life-size black and red ink illustrations of grotesque
caricatures, holding signs of dissent, silently shout at the passing public.
Ross Stewart is a painter and illustrator with a background in animation.
His artwork ranges from semi-abstract landscapes to ink figures and
caricatures. Commenting on social maladies such as suburban sprawl
and alienation, he injects a dark humour into serious issues.
ROSS STEWART
Robert Dunne
Originally from Conahy, a former mining village in County Kilkenny, Robert
Dunne states “The possibility of being an artist never really arose as most
people worked in local factories, “buildings” or,
as in my case, emigrated. No-one had ever
heard of anyone being an artist. My work is
mainly about this part of my life, growing up in
a community but being somehow different or
separate from it, and these feelings of being an
outsider, which are more acute as an emigrant”.
A multi-media artist, Robert studied at
Cleveland Institute of Art, the Museum
School of Fine Art, Boston and the National
College of Art and Design.
Nicola Henley
Nicola Henley’s textiles are made by a combination of
dying, painting and screen-printing cotton calico and
texturing the surface with various materials stitched into the
cloth. Her work is inspired by studying birds in flight in the
natural environment in the west of Ireland. The change of
scale from bold printing and painting, to the intimacy of
close stitching, helps to convey the concept of near detail
with the open space of a landscape or seascape.
Tracy Sweeney
Nicola Henley trained at Goldsmiths College, London and
now lives and works in County Clare.
GRENNAN
MILL
CRAFT
SCHOOL
visual art w 55
CERAMICS IRELAND & KOZO GALLERY
Crafts Council of Ireland
“If you lived here, you would be home by now is an exhibition of hundreds of
photographs, capturing the villages and byroads of the country, from Kilkenny
to Mayo at night. A four-hour drive in the dark makes the mind drowsy. Lights
blur into white lines. I leave my camera on the dash and capture movement
and place in a linear way, combined with maps and other images of locational
detail. This exhibition records what every commuter thinks of on a long
journey; repetition, speed, random thoughts, and the need to get home”.
Tracy Sweeney holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Galway/Mayo Institute
of Technology. www.tracysweeney.com
The Parade (view from street)
8 - 17 August
ROBERT DUNNE
Castlecomer Estate Yard,
Castlecomer
9 - 17 August, 10am-5pm
TRACY SWEENEY
Ormonde College, Ormonde Rd
8 - 17 August, 10am-6pm
56 w children’s
events
Children under 12 yrs must be
accompanied by an adult at all
times to all perfomance events.
For children aged 6-10 yrs
Saturday 9 August
2pm & 4pm
Sunday 10 August
4pm
CBS Primary,
Stephen Street, Kilkenny
Admission €10
Duration 45 mins
For children aged 2-5 yrs
Monday 11 &
Tuesday 12 August
11.30am, 1.30pm & 3.30pm
Wednesday 13 August
11.30am & 1.30pm
CBS Primary,
Stephen Street, Kilkenny
Admission €10
“Beautifully crafted,
utterly engaging”
THE HERALD
Teater Patrasket
Jamie Adkins
(DENMARK)
Circus INcognitus
Snow
White b/w
Two troubadours up to their necks in powder, three attempts to kill the
forces of good, seven dwarves in tennis shoes and one apple’s journey
through a fairytale…
Based on the well-known story, this charming, playful performance from the
highly-regarded Teater Patrasket uses a range of theatrical techniques, from
the slapstick of Commedia Dell Arte to classic clown performances, to win over
the hearts and minds of younger audiences. With remarkable good humour
and clearly revelling in the fine art of story presentation, the energetic players
deliver a committed performance which conveys the very essence of theatre.
The result is a fine theatre performance, bound to trigger joy and laughter
among audiences young and old.
Complete Productions
(UK)
(CANADA)
One of the world’s most versatile and charming natural clowns. In Jamie
Adkins’ new show, Circus INcognitus, his deceptively clever clowning and
acrobatic feats are brought to life in the story of a man who has
something to say, but can’t quite get it out…
children’s w 57
events
Children under 12 yrs must be
accompanied by an adult at all
times to all perfomance events.
Beginning with an empty stage and a single microphone, a shy Jamie
musters the courage to face what he fears most: speaking in public. He
gradually creates the show around him using everyday objects to create
the backdrop for his ingenious circus routines.
Each step of the show is fraught with new challenges, but for every
problem there is a solution. Except Jamie’s solutions tend to be rather
unusual… Follow this resourceful, multi-talented performer on his
adventure about having the courage to try new ideas, not giving up when
all goes wrong and, most of all, surprising yourself. Because you never
know what you can do until you try.
For children of all ages &
their families
Wednesday 13 August
4pm & 7pm
Thursday 14 August
1pm & 4pm
The Watergate Theatre
Admission €10
Duration 60 mins
Moussa’s Castle
When it comes to castles, Moussa is an expert! If he’s not making
them of sand, mud, or sausages and mash, he’s drawing
them. Even when he’s asleep, Moussa dreams of
castles. But what he really, really wants to do is to
build one. Everyone says he’ll never do it and
Moussa quickly discovers that building a castle isn’t
so easy… But will Moussa give up on his dream?
Moussa’s Castle is a magical story of hope and
determination, underscored with live music, and
especially created for children aged 2-5 yrs.
Director HEATHER FULTON
Music MATT ELLIOTT
Design KATY WILSON
“infinitesimal acts of
imperceptible genius…
a dexterous clown walks
a daffy line”
NEW YORK TIMES
58 w children’s
events
Clare Muireann Murphy
(IRELAND)
For children aged 3-6 yrs
Saturday 16 August
2pm & 4pm
CBS Primary,
Stephen Street, Kilkenny
Admission €8
Sunday 17 August
2pm & 4pm
Lyrath Estate Hotel,
Dublin Road, Killkenny
Admission €10
Mini-Me
Using card, pastels, colourful lollipop sticks
and a range of other materials, participants
will design and make a mini-version of
themselves, or their pals, or family.
Festival Flags
This two-day textile-based workshop will see participants create their own
giant Festival Flag. Participants will design each side of the flag, paint the
design using fabric paints and go home with their own unique piece to hang
on their wall.
Clare Muireann Murphy is a
storyteller, wordsmith, performer
and co-founder of
www.storytellersunlimited.com
COLM HOGAN
For families with children
aged from 5 yrs
children’s w 59
events
WITH GENEVIEVE HARDEN & DEIRDRE O’REILLY
Talking Hippos! Love struck Pirates!
Wide mouthed frogs! Come and be
enchanted in this dynamic and
active storytelling session for
children aged 3-6 yrs. Crammed
with animal adventures, songs and
magical tales from Ireland and world
culture, Clare’s sparkling personality,
dynamic physical style and quirky
sense of humour will delight and
enthral, bringing audiences on an
unforgettable journey.
Children under 12 yrs must be
accompanied by an adult at all
times to all perfomance events.
VISUAL ART
WORKSHOPS
Puppet Play
Nico Brown
(UK)
Glee
Following their wonderful musical
workshops at last year’s festival,
multi-instrumentalists Nico Brown and
Martin Brunsden are back with an
invitation to an hour of musical
performance and gentle participation
for families with children aged from 5
yrs. Mixing songs, musical games and
stories to engage the audience’s
imaginations, there will quite possibly
be pirates, animal sounds, baby
turtles and a musical meal, too!
Nico Brown was musician-in-residence at The Ark, a Cultural Centre for
Children, in Dublin from 1995-2000 and regularly runs workshops for families
at the National Concert Hall, Dublin.
Martin Brunsden (double bass/musical saw) has played with everyone from
PJ Harvey to the Hothouse Flowers. He recently finished recording with Kíla.
Using textiles, cardboard, feathers, polystyrene and found materials,
participants will make their own puppet characters and puppet theatre
to put them into.
Window Art
Using coloured acetate and transparencies, participants will create their very
own piece of window art using shape and colour. Hang it up on the window….
Watch the light shine through… What colours can you see..?
Paint the Music
When you listen to a piece of music, does it create a picture for you? In
these workshops, participants will listen to different types of music. Using
a range of materials, they will then draw, paint and colour the images they
see in their imagination, which are inspired by the music they hear.
For all workshops all participants should wear old clothes… just in case.
All materials supplied. 20 participants in each workshop.
MINI-ME Age 4-6 yrs
Monday 11 August
Workshop 1: 2pm - 3pm
Workshop 2: 4pm - 5pm
National Craft Gallery,
Castle Yard
Admission €10
FESTIVAL FLAGS Age 9-12 yrs
TWO-DAY WORKSHOP
Tues 12 - Wed 13 August
10.30am - 12.30pm each day
PUPPET PLAY Age 7-9 yrs
Tues 12 & Wed 13 August
2.30pm - 4.30pm each day
WINDOW ART Age 4-6 yrs
Friday 15 August
Workshop 1: 10.30am - 11.30am
Workshop 2: 12.30pm - 1.30pm
VEC Arts Space,
New Street, Kilkenny
Admission €10
Thursday 14 August
Workshop 1: Age 4-6 yrs
11am - 12 noon
Workshop 2: Age 7-9 yrs
2pm - 3.15pm
Workshop 3: Age 10-12 yrs
4.15pm - 5.30pm
Castlecomer Discovery Park
Admission €10
Crafts Council of Ireland
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Thank you to:
FESTIVAL PARTNERS
Bluett & O’Donoghue Architects
Poe Kiely Hogan
FESTIVAL ASSOCIATES
Carroll’s Bar
Lautrecs
Reidy & Foley Solicitors
Restaurant Café Sol
Friends of Kilkenny Arts Festival
Every Year for ten days in August, Kilkenny
comes alive with a feast of artistic
entertainment for all, taking full advantage
of the city’s stunning historic buildings and
easily accessible trails.
As a non-profit organisation, you our
friends, are our lifeline, allowing us to
present a festival of distinction that
continues to inspire and delight. Your
valuable contribution helps us bridge the
gap between government grants,
sponsorship and box office sales.
Join us and not only will you play a vital
role in ensuring the festival happens, but
you will enjoy a whole host of benefits
during the festival.
To find out more, call us on 056 776 3663
or drop us an email at info@kilkennyarts.ie
Rinuccini Restaurant
Ripley’s Steakhouse
The Book Centre
W.A. Smithwick & Sons
Zuni Restaurant and Townhouse
BUSINESS PATRONS
Club House Hotel
Emerald Garden
Erinstone
Gerry O’Sullivan
Jeff Howes Golf Design Ltd.
John’s Green Medical Centre
Kieran O’Gorman, Hair, Beauty
& Day Spa
WhazOn
BUSINESS FRIENDS
Art & Hobby Shop
Blanchville House
Bregagh Guest House
Brett’s Hardware
Buggy’s Coaches
Castle Cabinets
Chesneau Leathers
Chez Pierre
Christy’s Bar
Collins Shoes
Curtain Sense
Duggan Steel Group
FBD Insurance
Finlay Hydrascreens
Fogarty Financial
Frank Wall Man Shop
Goods
Ground Floor Café
Helene Broderick Interiors
Kafe Katz
Khan’s Books
Kilkenny Coaches
Kilkenny Chamber of
Commerce and Industry
Leinster Stone
Maeve Flynn
Mahony’s Chemist
Murphy Jewellers
Ormonde Brick
Patrick M. Farrell Chartered Acc.
Re-charge+
Rollercoaster Music
Rover Kilkenny
Rudolf Heltzel
Sherry Fitzgerald Group Plc.
Subway Sandwiches
The Blinds Boutique
The Gourmet Store
The Springhill Clinic
Thomas Breathnach
Threesixty
White’s Pharmacy Ltd
Willie Duggan Lighting Ltd
Yesterday’s
INDIVIDUAL FRIENDS
Bobby Aylward
Tom Teehan
Your City… Your Festival… Your chance to make a difference
62 w booking information
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Festival Box Office: St Francis Abbey Brewery, Parliament Street (opposite Rothe House)
Telephone & Credit Card Hotline 056 775 2175
Online Booking www.kilkennyarts.ie
Ticket prices include booking fee.
Tickets purchased at outlets outside of Kilkenny are subject to a €2 agents fee.
Tickets purchased online and over the phone by credit card are subject to a credit card booking fee.
Tickets purchased directly from the Festival Box Office are not subject to any additional charges,
unless payment is made using a credit card.
EVENT
Box Office open Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm
Weekends from 26 July: Sat 11am-5pm, Sun 12pm-5pm
Concessions are available and apply to students, senior citizens and
the unwaged. Evidence will be requested at point of purchase.
Concessions are not available for online bookings.
DATE
TIME
NUMBER
PRICE
VALUE
Booking opens Tuesday 1st July
Student standby tickets available on the door, subject to availability.
25% discount on the production of a valid student card, 15 minutes
before start time.
Festival Club Membership is available through the Friends/Patrons
Scheme. Details from the Box Office.
Ticket Packages 10% discount if you buy tickets for three events or more at the same time
10% discount for bookings of ten or more people.
•
•
•
•
•
Belarus Free Theatre Package: €55 for all three Belarus Free Theatre performances (p.8-9)
The Dresden Group Package: €48 for any three concerts by The Dresden Group (p.14-15)
Irish Package: €28 for Hayes & Cahill (p.22) + GAA Symposium (p.40)
3epkano Film Package: €26 for two films (p.35)
Donal McCann Package: €16/€13 for full day (4 films), €11/€8 for two films (p.36)
Booking Form
Postal Bookings to: Kilkenny Arts Festival Administration Office, 9/10 Abbey Business Centre, Abbey St, Kilkenny
Tel +353 56 775 2175, Fax +353 56 775 1704, www.kilkennyarts.ie
NAME
DATE
ADDRESS
TELEPHONE DAY
MASTERCARD
CARD NUMBER
SIGNATURE
TELEPHONE EVENING
VISA
LASER
EXPIRY DATE
Please enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope with order. Cheques/POs should be made payable to
Kilkenny Arts Festival Ltd. Please read the booking information carefully and check totals to avoid delays. Whilst
every effort will be made to adhere to the advertised programme, Kilkenny Arts Festival reserves the right to
alter the programme. Please note that latecomers may only be admitted at the discretion of Management.
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THE KILKENNY ORMONDE HOTEL IS THE OFFICIAL ACCOMMODATION PROVIDER TO KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL.
THE FESTIVAL VOLUNTEERS ARE KINDLY SPONSORED BY SMART PLACEMENTS.
KILKENNY CITROËN CENTRE IS THE OFFICIAL TRANSPORT PROVIDER TO THE KILKENNY ARTS FESTIVAL.
Festival information, reviews, artists interviews, and ticket give-aways broadcast each day of the Festival on KCLR 96fm.
St John’s
Priory
Winstons
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Embassies and Cultural Institutions
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Abbey Brewery
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TO MOUNT JULIET
CONRAD