MONDAY
POP
Take That
3Arena Dublin 6.30pm €77 (sold out) ticketmaster.ie Also Tues, same venue 6.30pm €77 ticketmaster.ie
Now down to three core members – Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Mark Owen (below) – there's been an undeniable shift in pop sensibilities within Take That. Although the boyband tag still haunts them, they have successfully avoided being snagged by the kind of expensive supper club trappings that plague other music acts of similar background and vintage.
Put this down to Barlow's skills as a pop songwriter, a facility that too many other boybands don't have. These shows form part of the group's Wonderland Live 2017 tour, which focuses on their latest album. Expect a few songs from this album, then, as well as a blend of back catalogue goodies and the by-now slightly OTT stage production. Support is the rather excellent "girl band" All Saints. TCL
TUESDAY
CLASSICAL
Elizabeth Cooney and Friends
City Hall, Waterford 7.30pm €15 classicallinks.ie, and on tour
Until the advent of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in the mid 1990s, performances of string sextets were as rare in Ireland as hen's teeth. The festival seems to have managed to change both the interests of musicians and the taste of audiences. Brahms's String Sextet in B flat has had two outings in Ireland already this year, and it's about to get six more as part of a tour led by violinist Elizabeth Cooney with colleagues young and old – Mairéad Hickey, Simon Aspell, Ruth Gibson, Guy Johnston and Brian O'Kane. The pairing is Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, and the later performances will be in Cork, Galway, Sligo, Navan and Dublin. MD
SONGWRITER
Lisa Mitchell
Grand Social Dublin 8pm €13 thegrandsocial.ie
UK/Australian singer- songwriter Lisa Mitchell (above) sprang out of the traps in 2009 with her debut album, Wonder, but has subsequently taken her time to consolidate that record's surefire mix of indie pop and tough-as-nails folks. Genuine crossover success will arrive, we're sure, as Mitchell's background blends commercial sensibilities (a former contestant of Australian Idol) with more rooted creative experiences (a teenage folk/pop unit that performed at many of Australia's low-key folk festivals).
Mitchell's latest album Warriors takes a different stylistic approach, with dance beats and synths infiltrating her signature indie pop/folk. Special guest is Italian singer-songwriter Fila Bo Riva, who delivers a rugged mixture of pop, folk and soul. TCL
ART
Rosc 50 – 1967/2017
Project spaces, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin Until June 19 imma.ie
A programme of events marking the 50th anniversary of the inaugural Rosc exhibition in 1967, the first of an important series of major international exhibitions of contemporary art. The season, organised in collaboration with the National Irish Visual Arts Library, begins with a display in the Project Spaces based on the research of Dr Brenda Moore McCann. It includes NIVAL archival material as well as films and clippings from the RTÉ Archive, with evidence of the generally positive but mixed reception that greeted the event. It may seem hard to imagine from a current perspective, given the transformation in travel and communications since 1967, but at the time it was a bold, visionary undertaking and revelatory for the vast majority of its audience. AD
WEDNESDAY
COMEBACK
The Cranberries
Waterfront Hall Belfast 7pm £52.50/£44/£38 waterfront.co.ukAlso Thurs, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre Dublin 7pm €60.45/€54.65/€49.65 bordgaisenergytheatre.ie
It's no secret that the members The Cranberries have had something of a rollercoaster ride since their formation in the late 1980s, but irrespective of intriguing side projects and aspiring solo careers, all roads – as guitarist Noel Hogan told The Ticket a few weeks ago – lead back to the band format.
Promoting a different style of Greatest Hits album (Something Else, on which the band's best known songs, and a few new ones, are presented with the Irish Chamber Orchestra), it has been a while since we've seen them perform in such intimate surroundings. Sold out gigs, too. The survival plan continues. TCL
CLASSICAL
Summer Baroque
NCH, Dublin 8pm €12-€39.50 nch.ie
British conductor Andrew Parrott is best-known as the founder and conductor of the period-instruments groups the Taverner Consort and Players. He returns to Dublin after an absence of nearly 30 years to conduct an 18th-century programme with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. The evening contains a real curiosity, one of the concertos that Haydn wrote for a pair of lire organizzate, a kind of hurdy-gurdy with a bellows. The 21st-century replacement is usually, as it is on this occasion, a pair of flutes, Joshua Beatty and Michael Cox. Suzanne Thorn is the soloist in an oboe concerto by Albinoni, and the programme opens with Bach's Third Orchestral Suite and closes with Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. MD
JAZZ-ROCK
Michael Buckley's House of Horns Band
Arthurs, Dublin, 8.30pm, €10, arthurspub.ie
Despite being perhaps the most talented saxophonist on the Irish scene and a riveting live performer, Michael Buckley spends more time these days in his west Dublin recording studio, House of Horns. Three years ago, the experiment escaped the lab with the released of It Is What It Is, described by this reviewer as "as fine a slice of old school jazz rock as you'll hear this side of the Atlantic".
With echoes of classic fusion like Steely Dan and the Brecker Brothers, and a muscle-bound band of top Dublin musicians, it was an aptly named project, indulging Buckley’s own passion for the genre. Here’s a rare opportunity to hear that music live, with a powerful 9-piece band that includes Buckley’s partner Margot Daly on vocals, trumpeter Ronan Dooney and drummer Jason Duffy. CL
WIDE OPEN VISTAS
We Banjo 3
Whelan's 8pm €15 whelanslive.com Also Thurs, Set Theatre, Kilkenny
Enda and Fergal Scahill and Martin and David Howley have been ripping up the rule book for the past few years, headlining US festivals and revving it up all over the place here too.
Beneath that playful, devil-may-care collective exterior lurks a seriously focused foursome, hell-bent on making music steeped in tradition, yet soaked in their own identity too. Tonight's the opening night in their summer tour. SL
JAZZ
Jazz at Dwarf Jar
Dwarf Jar Café, Wellington Quay, Dublin from 7.30pm, Adm free
Word is spreading amongst Dublin's jazz musicians about the Dwarf Jar Café – the stage is suspended high above the tables in this light-filled new coffee shop, reached by a makeshift ladder. Somehow, saxophonist Daniel Rorke, bassist Cormac O'Brien and drummer Brendan Doherty are getting their instruments up there, and this new weekly jam session has the makings of something special. CL
THURSDAY
INDIE
San Fermin
Sugar Club Dublin 8pm 16.50 thesugarclub.com
Two years ago, Brooklyn-based San Fermin presented itself as more of a chamber pop experience than anything else. This was due to the band's linchpin, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, taking his creative cues whilst at college from composer Nico Muhly. Muhly, known for his work with the likes of Grizzly Bear and Sufjan Stevens, imparted the information necessary for the fusion of intuitive, ensemble playing that knits together seamlessly. The band's second album, Jackrabbit, took them out of the shade with a blend of orchestral pop/folk that was beats-driven, sophisticated, dramatic and playful. Latest album Belong continues San Fermin's ambitious musical trajectory, so presume rousing music that rebukes categorisation. TCL
PURE DROP
Cormac Begley and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh
St. John's Theatre, Listowel 8pm €18/€16 stjohnstheatrelistowel.com
Two musicians utterly at home in their own skin and hungry for mining the deeper seams of the tradition, Begley and Ó Raghallaigh have brought a fresh sensibility to bear on their chosen instruments of concertina and fiddle. Begley's recent eponymous solo debut album is a masterclass in personal expression, with his bass, baritone, treble and piccolo concertinas casting light and shadow over his rich west Kerry musical inheritance.
Ó Raghallaigh, a member of The Gloaming, is a musician who favours a less is more approach, with his Hardanger fiddle wending its way across hill and dale. This is music that lurks in quiet corners, occasionally nipping out into the sunlight to whoop and holler at life's quirks and foibles. SL
SKREAMADELICA
Skream - Ollie Jones
Electric Galway 10pm €10 electricgalway.com
Ollie Jones goes west. The Croydon native who started out preaching the dubstep gospel behind the counter at Big Apple Records has always been one to watch. One of the most striking things about Jones' rise is how he's successfully taken his sound and smarts to the airwaves with radio gigs first on Rinse FM and later on BBC Radio One. As a producer, he's released some bumper records and has also shown a fondness for collaborations, forming bassy supergroup Magnetic Man with Benga and Artwork and hooking up more recently with Jackmaster, Seth Troxler, and Eats Everything as JESuS. Support from Paul Belton. JC
ART
The Cool Vernacular
Jim Furlong. The Belltable, 69 O'Connell St, Limerick Until May 27 limerickprintmakers.com
In March 1999, Levi Strauss closed half its US factories, putting 6,000 people out of work. Sales of Levi jeans had slumped, largely because the brand was no longer seen as cool. Cool is what brands aim for, to the extent that they send cool hunters to check out urban subcultures and see what is trending. Jim Furlong studied art at LSAD after 30-plus years in the postal service and is now a member of Limerick Printmakers. In this show he sets out "to create a narrative on the subject of the commodification of cool and cultural dissidence. AD
