MUSIC FESTIVALS: Arminta Wallace looks at a selection of the music festivals around the country this summer
Heineken Green Energy Festival
Dublin city centre
May 3rd-6th
www.festivalfit.ie
We've all seen the ads, and the slogan could apply to the entire season: "Are you festival fit?" With teatime gigs at Dublin Castle, mid-evening slots at the Temple Bar Music Centre and late-night offerings at the Olympia and the Ambassador, this is not for the flat-footed. The highest peak to be scaled is on Bank Holiday Monday at 2 p.m., when The Frames kick off a megathon at the Castle, which includes guests Mundy, Damien Rice and Bell XI. Come June bank holiday, the whole shebang is repeated at the Munster Showgrounds in Cork, with Bryan Ferry, among others, added to the mix. Galway gets a crack at it on August 16th-18th.
Carlsberg Rhythm 'n' Roots Festival
Kilkenny city
May 3rd-6th
www.kilkenny.ie
While the young and impossibly trendy flock to the Heineken Green Energy Festival, cats who prefer their tunes in the key of alt country should boogie on down to Kilkenny for this low-key, laidback outing.
Drumcliffe, Co Sligo
May 3rd-6th
079-64202 or 01-6718937
For a super-tranquil alternative to the madding crowds of May, a weekend of chamber music in Yeats country might be just the thing.
The Sligo-based Vogler Quartet will be joined by the Vienna Piano Trio and guest soloists including violinist Catherine Leonard, clarinettist Jörg Widmann and mezzo-soprano Dagmar Pecková for a programme which spans Mozart to Messiaen, Rachmaninov to Prokofiev. And at noon on Monday, the festival will unveil its very own première: Stephen Gardner's May You Live till You Die.
Dublin International Salsa Festival
Hilton Hotel, Dublin
May 10th-12th
087-2024573
www.salsa.ie
Salsa has taken over from ceol agus craic as the mandatory stuff to strut in post-Celtic-Tiger Ireland; and at the Hilton Hotel on the canal, three nights of partying are promised, with classes for beginners, workshops for improvers, a display by the world salsa champions from Miami and - for complete show-offs - the Irish Salsa Dance Open Championships, where you can, literally, dance till you drop.
ESB West Clare Jazz School
Kilbaha, Co Clare
June 15th-21st
065-9058034
When you think of west Clare, jazz is probably not the sort of music that instantly springs to mind - but the West Clare Jazz School, now in its third year, is aiming to change all that.
Formal morning classes offer serious jazz students the opportunity to study with Louis Stewart and his team of top-class tutors; come the afternoons, students and teachers alike can let their hair down in informal sessions; while each night, the pubs of Kilbaha - and nearby Cross and Carrigaholt - turn mellow as the sun sets on a variety of evening concert performances.
West Cork Chamber Music Festival
Bantry, Co Cork
June 29th-July 7th
027-61105
www.westcorkmusic.ie
Here's how to do a festival properly: it's not just a matter of putting world-class musicians into a spectacular performance space, but of offering an intelligent mix of "old" and "new" music in an atmosphere which, as the days unfold, allows genuine music-making to grow and develop. Highlights? Pick one at random: Marcus Ullmann singing Schubert's heart-rending song cycle Die Winterreise, accompanied by Joanna MacGregor on piano, Andrei Gridchuk playing Shostakovich's devastatingly emotional Viola Sonata, completed just before the composer's final admission to hospital, accompanied by pianist Pavel Nersessian. Or how about Mozart played by the Artis Quartet from Vienna? Or Brahms, or Berg, or Beethoven, or Bright Sheng? Definitely a must-fest.
Willie Clancy Summer School
Miltown Malbay, Co Clare
July 7th-15th
065-7084281
Thirty years a-growin', and the "Willie Week" has taken over vast tracts of West Clare, attracting large contingents of visitors from countries as musically diverse as Norway and Japan in the process.
With 120 workshops going on alongside lectures, classes, céilís and set dancing, everybody who is anybody in the trad world will be there: if you're into trad, you'll be there, too.
Witnness
Fairyhouse Racecourse
July 13th and 14th
www.mcd.ie/witnness
For sheer scale, the annual Witnness extravaganza is hard to beat. Quick sample of the acts on offer: Basement Jaxx, Air, Sonic Youth, The Devlins, Badly Drawn Boy, Morcheeba, Chemical Brothers, Green Day, Gomez, Tricky, Mercury Rev, and, headlining on Saturday and Sunday respectively, Prodigy and Oasis. And then there's Cornelius, Less Than Jake, The Coral, Lemonjelly, Melaton . . . you can see why they need six different stages, can't you?
Killaloe Music Festival
Killaloe, Co Clare
July 17th-July 21st
061-202620
www.icorch.com
Change is in the air at Killaloe, as outgoing Irish Chamber Orchestra director Fionnuala Hunt prepares to hand the baton to new man Nicholas McGegan, and the pair will conduct this year's opening and closing-night concerts, respectively.
Hunt's programme, which includes T.C. Kelly's O'Carolan Suite, has an Irish flavour with a dash of Tchaikovsky; McGegan's, featuring Purcell, Britten and Elgar, is undeniably redolent of Albion. In between there's a Brahms quintet, Beethoven's Hammerklavier with pianist Stephen Kovacevich, a lunchtime organ recital by Gerard Gillen, and a jazz night.
Opera in the Open
The Amphitheatre, Wood Quay
Thursdays in August, starting August 1st
01-8722816
Now here's a tasty idea for a summer lunch: arm yourself with a sambo and some juice, and take your place at Dublin City Council's outdoor amphitheatre for some opera in the round. You can catch the highlights from Puccini's Madame Butterfly, Verdi's Rigoletto, Mozart's Così fan tutte, Lehar's The Merry Widow and Gluck's gorgeous Trojan War tale, Iphigénie en Tauride. Performances begin at 1 p.m., piano accompaniment is by David Wray, narrator Ted Courtney explains all, and admission is free.
Dunmore East Bluegrass Festival
Dunmore East, Co Waterford
August 22nd-25th
051-383133
Festival fit, how are ya: by the time the end of August comes around, we'll be plum partied out.
Which, methinks, makes it just the time for some easy-goin', finger-pickin' bluegrass. Strumming the light fantastic at the eighth Dunmore East festival will be The Hickory Project from the east coast US of A, The Freightliners and Knotty Pine from the N of I, Woodbine from Athy and - regular visitors, these - Cop from the Czech Republic.
