ST PATRICK’S DAY
St Patrick's DayParade
Dublin city centre (and every other town, city and decent village in Ireland) Noon-2pm stpatricksfestival.ie
Wearing stiff uniforms; standing in an orderly fashion; reams of farm machinery – who doesn't love a good parade? In fairness, the St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin is usually a riot of colour and fun, a far cry from the convoy of John Deeres that most Irish villages in the 1990s made do with (though no one could argue with the sleek and sultry lines of the 5000 Series). This year's parade in Dublin will kick off at noon at Parnell Square and those looking to get a good central viewing spot should head for the Rosie Hackett Bridge, rather than Westmoreland Street. From there, it will head up Dame Street and wind around towards St Patrick's Cathedral. Expect it to last about two hours, with Olympic silver medallist Annalise Murphy grand marshalling the troops.
Damien Jurado
Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire Co Dublin 8pm €23 paviliontheatre.ie
Seattle, Washington's Damien Jurado is a man of subtle skills, not least being the ease with which he skips from one musical style to another. His solo career started more than 20 years ago, and along the way has incorporated sombre singer-songwriter tunes (Ghost of David, 2000), sprightly power pop (I Break Chairs, 2002), stark reflectiveness (Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son, 2014), and idiosyncratic psychedelia (Visions of Us on the Land, 2016). His lyrics are concise and literate, and if there has ever been a companion songwriter to the lean prose styles of Willy Vlautin or Daniel Woodrell, then Jurado is the one.
God's Waiting Room
Sugar Club, Dublin 10pm €15 facebook.com/davidholmesproducer
David Holmes brings his latest club venture to Dublin for a special St Patrick's Night outing. As a DJ, producer and composer, Holmes has been changing things up and setting his own agenda for the past 25 years. Along the way, he's released a slew of great music, scored films such as Out of Sight and Hunger, produced the fantastic film Good Vibrations about the Belfast punk scene, and produced everyone from Primal Scream to Noel Gallagher. God's Waiting Room is Holmes on a full tilt musical trip, a night on the tiles soundtracked by music of every hue imaginable, from electronic to cinematic, from experimental to psych'n'roll.
Higher Vision
Bellurgan Park Manor Co Louth 2pm €75/€40 highervision.ie
The 300-year-old Bellurgan Park, located halfway between Belfast and Dublin just beyond Dundalk, has seen its fair share of entertainment events of late, like last summer's Arcadian Field. Promoters Strictly Deep and the Building Society have put together a heavyweight bill featuring a really decent clutch of reliable house and electronica operators over five stages – though the lack of female DJs on the bill is a major cause for concern. Highlights include Bristol hit-maker Julio Bashmore, classy Glaswegian producer Denis Sulta, chi-chi house kingpin Dimitri From Paris, Glengormley producer Garry McCartney aka Ejeca, Bastardo Electrico's Jamie Behan and old-school hardcore heroes Altern-8.
Napalm Death
Dolan's Warehouse Limerick 8pm €22 dolans.ie Also Sun, The Limelight Belfast 7pm £20 limelightbelfast.com
There was a brilliant documentary on British grindcore band Napalm Death some years ago. While investigating the West Midlands band's notions of "brutality and velocity in the worlds of punk, hardcore and metal", it was noted that their gigs would often be visited by their mothers, who would announce that despite the noise all of the band members are "quite nice boys, really". When you see this bunch on stage niceness has nothing to do with it. Delivering breakneck speed variants of tracks from their debut album (Scum, 1987) to their latest (Apex Predator – Easy Meat, 2015), Napalm Death make a clatter like no one else.
Deep Shit
Opium Rooms, Dublin 6pm €15 soundcloud.com/deep-shit
When Foals are not playing the sort of shows for which mosh-pits were invented, you'll find keyboard player Edwin Congreave popping up as a DJ at nights like this. Congreave makes exquisite house alongside fellow indie star Jack Savidge from Friendly Fires as Deep Shit, which is also the name of their label and occasional club night. Those who dig sweatbox mixes of house, deep disco and acid will appreciate the sounds from the Foals' dude. Support from Nialler9, Mix & Fairbanks, Marcus O Laoire and Ciara Brady.
The Tulla Céilí Band
Kilruane MacDonagh's GAA Hall 7pm €12.50/€5 cloughjordanarts.ie
Step right up now folks for this fundraiser in aid of the Cloughjordan amphitheatre building project. Now just 71 years young, there are many who would claim that The Tulla Céilí Band (founded by Paddy Canny and Martin Hayes' father, P Joe) is only getting into its stride. With dance-callers, red lemonade and gallons of tea, Taytos and scones, not to mention raffles and prizes galore, tonight's shenanigans are a mighty fine way to celebrate the national holiday.
All Day Party
District 8 Dublin 2pm €25/€20 district8dublin.com
What else are you going to do on St Patrick's Day but hang out at a banging party in the Liberties? District 8 is the venue where a host of house and techno luminaries will be providing the tunes inside and outside. The headliners are American-Italian Berlin-based duo Matteo Milleri and Carmine Conte aka Tale Of Us, who've built quite a profile for themselves with raw, emotional electronic music. This Dublin 8 bash will also feature Moduse, Melodic's Mulljoy and String & Bates in the main room, while the Phases DJs, Lui Rwego and guests are at large in the Courtyard.
Tinfoil
District 8 Dublin 11pm €15/€10 district8dublin.com
If you're still in the mood for a party, there's a late-night hoohah in the shape of a live set from Tinfoil. Bringing together leading Dublin techno buccaneer Sunil Sharpe and Portlaoise's favourite techno producer Matt "DeFeKT" Flanagan, Tinfoil have already released a string of well received EPs and found many like-minded souls to dig their intense live shows. Support from John Heckle and Eavan.
SATURDAY
Emeli Sandé
Olympia theatre Dublin 8pm €34.45 (sold out) ticketmaster.ie
Medicine's loss is pop music's gain. When 30-year-old Emeli Sandé (right) stopped studying medicine at the University of Glasgow – in order to pursue a rather traditional career in pop music – little did she know that it would change her life. Initially a songwriter for hire (the likes of Professor Green, Cheryl Cole and Tinie Tempah would benefit from her smart songwriting style), Sandé eventually replaced the backroom shadows with front-of-house spotlights. With two hugely success-ful albums (2012's Our Version of Events, last year's Long Live the Angels), it's little wonder that this gig sold out almost as soon as it was announced. Too late or too unlucky to nab tickets? Not to worry -– Sandé returns to Dublin for a gig at the 3Arena on October 27. You have tickets for that one, right?
Kirkos
Bewley's Theatre, Powerscourt Centre, Dublin, 6.30pm (complimentary wine from 6pm) €10/€7 kirko4tet.eventbrite.ie
New music ensemble Kirkos's thrust for 2017 is a series of Kirkoskammer concerts. The group is taking a breather after a venture into performing in the dark and a focus on Fluxus. The new concerts are more conventional in presentation, but the repertoire is wide-ranging. In Kirkoskammer The String Quartet they pair Austrian classics from either end of the 20th century – Webern's Five Movements Op. 5 and Georg Friedrich Haas's String Quartet No. 2 - with the première of Breffni O'Byrne's Beyond a Shadowed Sky and Seán Ó Dálaigh's idiosyncratically titled (pul)s(a)tring quart(ion(echo)s)et.
Young Blood
NCH, Dublin €18-35 8pm nch.ie
Get your head around the voices of the new generation of Irish artists with this terrific lineup of musicians, storytellers and poets. Among those taking to the stage are Abby Oliveira, Hare Squead, John Cummins, Katie Laffan and recent Choice Prize winners Rusangano Family.
Begley & O'Grady: Boscaí & Bouzoukis
Kinvara Community Centre 8pm €12/€10 kinvaramusic.com
Irrepressible musician, broadcaster and oarsman Brendan Begley plays the polkas and slides of west Kerry with an uncommon delicacy and his voice carries all the distinctive and warm characteristics of the Begley clan. Tonight he joins bouzouki player, and fellow member of Beiginish, Noel O'Grady, for an evening celebrating the unpredictable energy that courses through their chosen instruments. Begley's store of songs, most of them delivered in the richest of Munster Irish, risk being upstaged by his endless supply of stories and tall tales, all documenting a life lived to the full. Exceptional music to mark Paddy's weekend.
SUNDAY
Cubus
Martina Galvin. Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny Until April 2 butlergallery.com
Specially made for the Butler Gallery as part of a new body of work, Martina Galvin's Cubus is a series of boldly coloured, outline squares, arranged to form a linked sequence. Galvin has long been drawn to working with light and colour in as direct a way as possible, with an eye to exploring the interplay of strength and delicacy in both. Here she marshalls her materials – painted steel structures – to create a sculptural dance through space in linear form, animating and reconfiguring the architectural environment. The visitor's negotiation of the space completes the process. In other pieces acrylic rods are the vital ingredient.
The Voice Squad
The White Horse, Ballincollig 8.30pm €15 whitehorse.ie
The General Patrick Cleburne Trad and Roots Weekend commemorates the "Stonewall of the West", a Cork-born soldier who fought on the Confederate side in the American Civil War. Tonight's concert features the inimitable acapella harmonies of Phil Callery, Gerry Cullen and Fran McPhail. Their reading of Annan Waters, The Parting Glass and Ae Fond Kiss are without compare. This is harmony singing that will have the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end from the get go.
MONDAY
Rick Astley
Waterfront Hall Belfast 8pm £35.50/£33/£25 (sold out) waterfront.co.uk Also Tues, Olympia theatre Dublin 8pm €45.45 (sold out) ticketmaster.ie
Proving the hoary old maxim that pop stars never die, they just hang around waiting for the next wave of nostalgia to wash over people, UK pop singer Rick Astley is once more on a rollercoaster ride of success and adulation. Now in his early 50s, Astley started off working for the immensely successful song production trio of (Mike) Stock (Matt) Aiken and (Pete) Waterman as studio gopher, but quickly became one of SAW's most successful acts. His first hit single (Never gonna give you Up, 1987) remains his signature song, and for fans of '80s pop music (original and latter day) we're guessing that will be the one to raise the roof.
Dublin by Lamplight
Abbey Theatre. Previews Mar 18-20 Opens Mar 21-Apr 1 7.30pm abbeytheatre.ie
Set in 1904, the year the Abbey was founded, and first staged during its centenary year, Corn Exchange's fondly remembered production presented an alternative history of the theatre that seemed only slightly more shambolic than the real thing. When it was staged in 2004, the merry game of Michael West's script, coupled with director Annie Ryan's energetic take on the commedia dell'arte, made sly allusions to Wilde, Joyce, Yeats and O'Casey, as culture became folded into political and personal movements. Fading actors, emerging rebels, whores and romantics swirl around "the Irish National Theatre of Ireland", as it prepares its heroic opening production, and sets a collision course with a calamity. Finally revived with both original members of the ensemble Karen Egan and Louis Lovett, together with longstanding collaborator Paul Reid and new recruits Colin Campbell, Caitríona Ennis and Gus McDonagh, the production may gently rib the origins of the Abbey. But as this satisfying sort of homecoming acknowledges, it was also the making of the company.
TUESDAY
Ride
The Limelight Belfast 7pm £24 limelightbelfast.com Also Wed, Olympia theatre Dublin 8pm €34.50 ticketmaster.ie
Viewed by some cynics as the last refuge of the sulky musician, the shoegaze scene of the early '90s was dominated by two bands – Ireland's My Bloody Valentine and Britain's Ride. Although they viewed the self-same scene with little interest, there was no doubt that Ride – in tandem with their 1990 debut album, Nowhere, subsequently proclaimed as a classic of the genre – sat very close to the top of it. By the mid-'90s, however, the band had split up, but now they're back with new songs (Charm Assault, Home is a Feeling), tour dates, and a new album scheduled for release in a few months time. Back in the saddle again? You could say that.
Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master's Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics
Trinity Long Room Hub, Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College, Dublin March 20-April 1
The links between the elegant clarity of Japanese coloured woodblock prints and modern Japanese manga comics are clear enough: both show tremendous flair for graphic design though their aims may differ. Once you get over any lingering cultural snobbery the common ground is apparent. Manga Hokusai Manga, explores the similarities and differences between the work of great artist Katsuchika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose work is universally well known and popular, and modern manga artists. It includes 15 volumes of Hokusai's published sketchbooks – Hokusai Manga – widely regarded as the inspiration for today's manga comics. Besides panels by Hokusai, books and videos, it includes work by seven contemporary manga artists addressing Hokusai and his work.
Irish Chamber Orchestra
University Concert Hall, Limerick; also NCH, Dublin, Wed €25, €22/€10
irishchamberorchestra.com
Igor Levit is one of those musicians who gives the impression of having begun at the top. He was born in Russia in 1987, has lived in Germany since 1995, and shot to attention internationally in 2013 with a highly acclaimed recording of Beethoven's last three piano sonatas, repertoire that only the bravest would chose to launch a career with. Later recordings of Bach, more Beethoven and contemporary composer Frederic Rzewski added even more allure. He has struck up a relationship with the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and this week plays Mozart's Elvira Madigan Concerto with them under Jörg Widmann, in a programme that also includes Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony.
WEDNESDAY
Malcolm Proud
Little Museum, Dublin 8pm (wine at 7pm) €15 ergodos.ie
For many people Glenn Gould has owned Bach's Goldberg Variations since the 1950s. But for Irish listeners the player with a special claim to the work is harpsichordist Malcolm Proud. Proud's latest performance of the great work will take place in the most intimate of spaces for one of Ergodos's candlelit Santa Rita concerts at the Little Museum of Dublin on St Stephen's Green.
Shackleton's Endurance
Pauline Garavan. Town Hall Theatre, Westport, Co Mayo Until March 31 westporttheatre.com
One picture is worth a thousand words – or many thousands, perhaps. Working with oil paint on aluminium panels, Pauline Garavan has made a striking work to commemorate last year's centenary of the rescue of Ernest Shackleton's crew after their ship Endurance had become trapped and crushed in the Antarctic ice-pack off Elephant Island. Many thousands of words from Shackleton's diary are painted onto the aluminium, sometimes greatly compressed, sometimes lightly and generously spaced, to form a vivid version of expedition photographer Frank Hurley's famous night-time photograph of the trapped ship.
Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye
Garter Lane Arts Centre. Mar 20 8pm garterlane.ie
Set in a provincial paper's newsroom, where top stories include an exposé of long queues at the motor tax office and the anticipated second coming of Christ, Starring Garrett Keogh and Michael Hayes (right) Jim Nolan's most recent play for Garter Lane Arts Centre, which premiered last year and now returns for a national tour, is a meditation on the shape of the nation as it commemorated the Rising. Lightly metaphorical and stealthily topical, it finds the Midlands paper acquired by a media conglomerate, just as the general elections are happening, sketching a dilemma between editorial independence and corporate capitulation. The plot - over detailed and happening mostly offstage - is almost too complicated to follow (it often feels like the treatment for a miniseries), but the conflict is conversely simple: can people under pressure retain their principles? As a nation continues to consider its founding ideals and its contemporary realities, that still makes for an appropriate think piece.
THURSDAY
Clang Sayne
Wexford Arts Centre, Market sq, Wexford, 8.30pm, €10, wexfordartscentre.ie
Wexford composer/musician/poet Laura Hyland's soundscapes explore the rugged uplands criss-crossed by contemporary folk, avant-pop, improvisation and acoustic abstraction. A singular, defiantly independent voice in the lineage of Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, and Bjork, Hyland empowers the members of her Clang Sayne quartet - drummer Matthew Jacobson, bass clarinetist Carolyn Goodwin and cellist Judith Ring – with similar independence. They embark on a four-date Irish tour this week, playing music from their startling new release, The Round Soul of the World. Tour continues next week to Fumbally Stables, Dublin (Friday 24th); Black Gate Cultural Centre, Galway, (Saturday 25th) and Gulpd Café, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork (Sunday 26th) More at clangsayne.com
Jane Proctor, Masashi Suzuki
Nag Gallery, Basement 59 Francis St, Dublin Until March 28 nagallery.ie
The amazingly fine grids of Jane Proctor's brush and pen drawings relate to weaving in their repetitive, intricately detailed, process driven patterns. They generate rich, shimmering textures in which minute variations entailed by the handmade nature of the work play a vital role. Each is painstakingly built up with movements of the hand using a small brush or a pen dipped in ink. They are paired with Masashi Suzuki's Chawan, turned bowls made for the traditional tea ceremony, and there is a corresponding ritualistic, meditative quality to Proctor's drawings: they are in themselves calming, meditative objects. In several respects they recall the work of Agnes Martin or the contemporary painter Makiko Nakamura. A vessel by Anthony O'Brien and a parcel of Japanese paper from a private collection is also on view.
Dermot McLaughlin, Dermot Byrne and Floriane Blancke
Powerscourt Townhouse Theatre, Sth. William Street 5.45pm €12 087-2547574
Donegal fiddle player McLaughlin joins accordionist and Altan founder member Byrne alongside his partner, Parisian harpist, fiddle player and singer Floriane Blancke. This is the latest instalment in the monthly Siamsaíocht@6! series hosted by Gael Linn. The rich musical tapestry of the north west will find full expression here, with caps doffed to the greats of Donegal including Tommy Peoples, John Doherty and Dinny McLoughlin. Blancke's musical heritage, steeped in Hungarian gypsy music, along with her formidable classical training, will create quite the surprising mix.
