Kilkenny Arts Festival 8 - 17 August 2008

www.kilkennyarts.ie

Tel +353 56 775 2175

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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

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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.

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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

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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)

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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)

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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

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“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

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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

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JOHN PHILIP SOUSA The Gladiator March ARTHUR SULLIVAN Overture H.M.S. Pinafore JULIUS FUCˇÍK Entrance of the Gladiators ANTONIN DVORˇÁK 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

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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

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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 DVORˇÁK Symphony No.8

“vibrant elegance, full of dexterity… A fine evening of music” BELFAST TELEGRAPH

“utterly charming, poised and graceful” THE INDEPENDENT

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LISA ROZE

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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

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MATTIAS EDWALL

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(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.

DEATH , UNTIMELY THE TRAGIC TO E DU . , AT ED EN CANCELL REGRETS TH ement event. ENT HAS BE TS FESTIVAL ils of a replac ON, THIS EV ta SS KILKENNY AR de r EN fo SV .ie N ts OF ESBJÖR w.kilkennyar x office or ww the festival bo t ac nt co se Plea

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”

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NANNI ANGELI

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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(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

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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

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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

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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.

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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”

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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 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

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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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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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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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kilkenny city map w 65 GE BRID N’S GREE

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The Heritage Council

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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

STR EET

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Hotel Sponsors

St Francis Abbey Brewery

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KILKENNY INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT COMPANY LTD

CBS Primary School

MIC HA EL

Oxfam Ireland The Maltings

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General Sponsors

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Crafts Council of Ireland

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Media Partners

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Programme Sponsors

CASTLE GROUNDS

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TO THOMASTOWN TO MOUNT JULIET CONRAD