THURSDAY
FILM FESTIVAL
Made in Taiwan
The Irish Film Institute, Dublin Thurs-Sun ifi.ie/made-in-taiwan
One of the world's greatest film-makers lands in Dublin this weekend. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the Taiwanese master, will join Chu T'ien-wen, his frequent screenwriter, for the Made in Taiwan festival at the Irish Film Institute. The festival opens Thursday night with a screening of Hou's indescribably beautiful The Assassin – winner of best director at Cannes. This newspaper's Tara Brady will host a question and answer session after a showing of A Time to Live, A Time to Die, Hou's 1985 autobiographical epic, on Friday evening. The festival will also be showing the director's The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and A City of Sadness (1989). Made in Taiwan, presented by the Chinese-Language Film Festival Ireland, has further invited Dr Chi-Sui Wang, Executive Curator of KuanDu International Animation Festival, to select six animated shorts. And there's more. A delicious event celebrating a fecund culture. DC
FIDDLER
Steve Wickham
Sugar Club Dublin 8pm €22.50 ticketmaster.ie
For perhaps too many years, Irish fiddle player Steve Wickham has been the catalyst to many a musician's flight of fancy. Fans of The Waterboys, for example, will have experienced how Wickham can get under the skin of music, slowly peel it off and then whirl it around like a toreador's cape. Promoting his second solo album Beekeeper (the tardy follow-up to 2004's Geronimo), Wickham embarks on a short Irish tour; whether he will be joined by any of the guests that appear on the album (these include Ger Wolfe, Katie Kim, Joe Chester, Mike Scott) remains to be seen. What's certain is that he will be delivering many shades of music and throwing a few accompanying shapes. Wickham also plays Model Arts Centre, Sligo, Friday May 12th and St Luke's Church, Cork, Saturday May 27th. TCL
JAZZ
Halferty/Ware/O'Brien/O'Donovan
Arthurs, Thomas St, Dublin, 8pm, €10, arthursub.ie
With the death last year of the great Louis Stewart, guitarist Tommy Halferty assumed the mantle of elder statesman of Irish jazz guitar. As he enters his seventh decade, Halferty's zest for musical life is undiminished, and already this year he has been feted at a star-studded birthday concert in Dublin and toured his own compositions with his jazz-meets-classical 10-piece Albert Camus project. But the Derryman's natural habitat is cutting loose in front of a hard-swinging rhythm section, and they won't come much harder than this Newpark faculty works outing, with pianist Phil Ware, bassist Cormac O'Brien and drummer Shane O'Donovan. No quarter will be given, nor asked for. CL
VANTASTIC Battle of the Bands
Odd Mollie's, Drogheda, Co Louth 8pm €4 vantastival.com
The notion of music acts fighting it out on a small stage for some manner of prize might seem quaint by today's strategic standards, but there is clearly some life left in the idea. Co-launched by Vantastival and Firestone Music Tour – and to tie in with the return of Vantastival to Beaulieu House, Baltray, Co Louth, on June 3rd/4th – five Irish music acts convene here to compete for the top prize package, which includes three days of recording at Grouse Lodge Studios, an €1,800 voucher for Dublin music store Musicmaker, and the headline slot on the Firestone Music Station stage at the festival. Battle of the Bands' judges includes yours-truly, Today FM sound engineer Gavin Blake, and Vantastival/Firestone Music Tour personnel. Seconds out – round one. TCL
JAZZ
Hugh Buckley/Myles Drennan/Dave Fleming
McHughs, Belfast, 8.30pm, £12/£8, mchughsbar.com
Buckley and Drennan are two of the most illustrious names in Irish jazz, musical dynasties that have shaped the history of the art form on this island. Guitarist Hugh Buckley is a nephew of the hugely influential saxophonist Dick Buckley and cousin of modern saxophone colossuses Richie and Michael. Pianist (and equally adept drummer) Myles Drennan is son of pianist Tony Drennan and brother of guitarist Anto. Along with the venerable bassist Dave Fleming – venerable enough to have collaborated regularly with the previous generation of Buckleys and Drennans – they represent a storehouse of jazz experience and a strong sense of continuity with the mainstream of the last generation. CL
ART
Memory Needs a Landscape
Bernadette Kiely. Taylor Galleries, 16 Kildare St, Dublin Until May 27 taylorgalleries.ie
Marking 20 years exhibiting with Taylor, Bernadette Kiely's show (seen in differing form at Solstice, Navan, recently) has a suitably reflective, retrospective quality, as she muses on familiar landscapes: around Thomastown where she lives, and the River Nore, southwards to Carrick-on-Suir, north to Donegal and North Mayo. She favours floods and mists and fogs and visual uncertainty, moments when we are slightly disorientated. AD
FRIDAY
CLASSICAL
RTÉ NSO/Tung-Chieh Chuang
NCH, Dublin 8pm €15-€35 nch.ie
The NSO is having an all Russian night, with Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma (below) taking on Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto, one of the works the composer kept in his drawer for a number of years, after the Soviet authorities put the heat on composers in 1948. Also on offer is the suite from Shostakovich's altogether more radical 1930 ballet The Golden Age.
The concert, conducted by Taiwanese conductor Tung-Chieh Chuang, winner of the 2015 International Malko Competition, opens with the overture to Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Tsar's Bride, and ends with Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. Soloist and conductor take part in a pre-concert conversation at 7pm. MD
EP LAUNCH
Loah
Sugar Club Dublin 8pm €10 thesugarclub.com
We can't recall when Ireland had such a diverse, multi- cultural range of female vocalists, and we really can't remember as good a singer within this area as Loah (below). The Irish/Sierra Leonean performer first came to prominence less than four years ago, and has spent the intervening time honing her work. In line with this, anyone with a pair of serviceable ears has been hugely impressed by her lithe combination of funk, R&B, soul, jazz and West African rhythms.
Tonight's gig sees the launch of her debut EP, This Heart, so between that and the bulk of her set it's safe to say that an album is imminent. Make a beeline, too, for special guest Farah Elle, who is also making people sit up and take notice. TCL
PERC UP
Scrobarnach Music Society
Cyprus Avenue Cork 11pm €16/€12.50 scrobarnachfestival.com
It's a rare week in these parts when we don't feature a producer with a Perc Trax release in his or her back-catalogue. Since 2004, Ali Wells' record label has released a huge number of tracks which have gone on to help define where electronic music is at these days. As a DJ, Wells is just as prolific as his label, taking in dates at clubs like Berghain and Fabric as well as slots at all the major festivals such as Awakenings, 10 Days Off, Unsound and more. He's in Cork tonight as a primer for the Scrobarnach festival which will take place in Portlaoise in August with Neil Landstrumm, Defekt, Head Front Panel and many more. Support from Bastardo Electrico main-man Jamie Behan and Olan Cahill. JC
TRAD BORDER CROSSINGS
Brian Finnegan & Sean Óg Graham and The Fitzgeralds
DC Music Club, Camden Row 9pm €17/€15 musiclee.ie
Flook's flute player Finnegan joins Beoga's accordionist Graham to explore the wider reaches of both the Irish and English traditional tune repertoires. Amplifying the mood of cross-border collaboration are The Fitzgeralds (below), a Canadian trio of siblings who play fiddle and step dance with no small degree of panache.
It's a powerhouse line up that promises to draw each and every listener in, given the intimate setting of the DC Music Club: a sort of haven for music lovers that harks back to the heyday of the folk club scene in Dublin. SL
ART
Rectangle, a written thing
New work by Sonia Shiel. Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Chancery Lane, Dublin Until May 27 kevinkavanaghgallery.ie
Sonia Shiel's bravura works have used and explored artifice and theatricality as ways of circling around the real. More recently, they have involved theatre more overtly, with live performance added to painting installations and video. Each work is conceived and created from the point of view of a protagonist who is trying to negotiate her way through a world that inextricably combines natural laws with arbitrary rules and inventions. The written thing in question here is a script, which "tells the story of an artist who, in being mistaken for a tree, learns what it is to be expressive." In "four ensembles", Shiel explores and visualises the stop-start nature, or "the stasis and composition of painting." AD
SATURDAY
RESIDENCY
Laurie Anderson
National Concert Hall Dublin 8pm €35/€30 Also Sun/Mon nch.ie
It's the first time we've heard of such a prestigious artist taking up a multi-stranded residency in the National Concert Hall, and you can be certain that many people have been waiting a long time for something like this to happen. Across three evenings, Anderson will oversee on the venue's main stage three distinct and different performances – Language of the future (Saturday) will investigate media manipulation in a digital age; Talking Book (Sunday) will investigate the interaction and meaning of "language and loss"; Improv! (Monday) is a collaboration with musicians that include Albanian cellist Rubin Kodheli and Irish hardanger player, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh.
Pre-show events at the venue's Studio space (each at 6pm) include a screening of Heart of a Dog (Saturday), a public interview focusing on 'Art and Politics in Present Day America' (Sunday, with Irish Times writer Tony-Clayton Lea), and the Quartet for Sol LeWitt (Monday, performed by members of Crash Ensemble). TCL
TWITCHERS NIGHT OUT
Tw!tch - Helena Hauff
Queen's Students Union Belfast 10pm €15 twitchbelfast.com
Helena Hauff (left) is the main draw in Belfast tonight, the Hamburg-based producer whose "Discreet Desires" album from last year was a hugely enjoyable sign of her smarts. It was a record in which Hauff marshalled the machines with considerable aplomb to ensure a heavyweight slew of tough, thumping, bleepy electro and industrial techno for dark rooms. She's joined at this bumper gathering by Joy Orbison, who released his first solo work in five years earlier in 2017 and also launched the Toss Portal label, and Edward, AKA German producer Gilles Aiken who has worked with the Dial, Live at Robert Johnson and Die Orakel labels. The Tw!tch residents add some homegrown flavours at a venue which is reportedly due to close in 2018. JC
JAZZ
Charlie Moon: Chet Baker Anniversary
Arthurs, Dublin, 9pm, €12, arthurspub.ie
Nearly 30 years after his tragic death, Chet Baker continues to exert a fascination on musicians and listeners. To many civilians, he is the quintessential jazz icon – beautiful, troubled, ultimately self-destructive, a character from a Tom Waits song, now preserved in the aspic of beatnik nostalgia. But the Oklahoma-born trumpeter was more than just a pretty (and latterly wizened) face. For musicians, he was a distinctive and original voice – as a trumpeter and as a singer – one of the pioneers of what became known as West Coast jazz. Guitarist and singer Charlie Moon (son of Dublin blues legend Nigel Mooney) is a Baker aficionado, and this tribute, with a band that includes trumpeter Eoin Grace and pianist Darragh Hennessy, falls on the anniversary of the day in 1988 when the trumpeter fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Amsterdam. CL
PLASTIC MAN
Flipside - Benjamin Brunn
Bar Tengu Dublin 10pm €8 facebook.com/tengunights
Benjamin Brunn is the star attraction tonight, the man whose Plastic Album for Third Ear last year received a lot of critical love. The Hamburg producer has been hugely prolific – Plastic Album was his ninth solo release and he also clocked up a big number of collaborations with Move D – and he's proven to be a techno innovator with wide appeal. Brunn's soulful approach is striking as he brings classic Detroit soundscapes and more quirky Braindance vibes together. Expect him to show off why labels such as Workshop and Smallville also relish a call from Brunn when he plays live at this city-centre haunt. JC
MERSEY SOUND
Seems Legit! - John Heckle
Central Arts Waterford 10pm €12/€10 centralarts.ie
John Heckle is the main draw in the southeast tonight. From Liverpool, Heckle has amassed a run of releases for Mathematics, Lunar Disko (the excellent Blues For A Red Giant EP), Crème Organisation, Signals, Apartment and others, all of which have shown his calibre when it comes to lovingly worked tech and house. Heckle is someone who has been engrossed in this task for many years, debuting as a 16-year-old known as Hek back in 2006. Along the way, his productions have become much more skillful, blending his appreciation for raw Detroit energy with wonky funk and hard-edged industrial nuance. Support from Seems Legit! resident Eddie Galavan and Between Ourselves' producer Geoff Foley. JC
TECHNO QUEENPIN
Ellen Allien
Opium Rooms Dublin 11pm €15 ellenallien.de
Multi-tasking is second nature to Ellen Allien (below). She's the Berliner behind the Bpitch Control label, the producer who has released a slew of throbbing techno thumpers and a DJ whose exquisite touch for what works on the dancefloor ensures her place on the international circuit.
In recent times, Bpitch Control has provided a home for acts like Moderat, Boris Wener, Jesse Perez, Joy Wellboy and many more to strut their stuff, as well as Allien's own releases like last year's LISm album and :Turn Off Your Mind EP. As a DJ, the Berliner is a name who features on the usual slew of club nights and festivals worldwide, while there are increasingly forays beyond the usual clubland venues to more cultured spots such as Centre Pompidou in Paris. JC
SUNDAY
ART
Does all the beauty of the world cease when you die?
Eamon O'Kane. Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny. Until June 11 butlergallery.com
The title is taken from Hans Christian Andersen's The Last Dream of the Old Oak Tree and Eamon O'Kane's work explores in various ways the history of humanity's relationship to the natural world. One set of works refers to psychologist Charles Koch's widely used Tree Test, in which a subject's drawing of a tree is used to interpret their personality and emotional history. In a series of photos taken over several years, he documents the state of an abandoned plant nursery, close to where he lives in Odense, Denmark, as it is reclaimed by wild vegetation. AD
