PICK OF THE WEEK
Temple Bar Tradfest 2017
templebartrad.com
Traditional music in the heart of Temple Bar and in the depths of January: something to put a pep in the step of even the hardiest of New Year naysayers. This year's festival expands its range further down the folk line, with Billy Bragg and Joe Henry celebrating the railroad history of the US with a raft of classic train-a-comin songs. A reconstituted Afro Celt Sound System and Fairport Convention join the fray, with all three concerts now sold out. Family events abound, with an appearance by the Chinese Spring Festival Performers and the Dublin Ukulele Band. Anyone with an appetite for a total, unconditional knees up has probably already bagged tickets for the tightly packed programme at Dublin Castle on Saturday night featuring Altan, the indomitable Four Men & A Dog and Boffin To Burren: the Dogs in particular, know how to party like few others.
Leslie Dowdall and Mike Hanrahan, along with Luan Parle and Clive Barnes perform individually and together in St Werburgh’s Church on Saturday night, and then there’s the divine Maria McKee, with support from Luan Parle: a very special performance in St Patrick’s Cathedral from a former resident who’s enjoyed massive success as a songwriter as well as a singer. That’s not to forget the countless sessions happening in Temple Bar’s pubs throughout the weekend too.
Now what to make of all those churches hosting traditional music in its many guises? They can make for odd bedfellows, so for the hardy of posterior, bring a cushion. - Siobhán Long
FRIDAY
Hattie Webb & Jack O'Rourke
White Horse, Ballincollig Cork 8.30pm €20 (sold out) whitehorse.ie
Time for a very cool line-up featuring a solo show from Hattie Webb (you may be more familiar with her as one of the Webb Sisters, a UK vocal duo that formed part of Leonard Cohen's latter-day touring band) and a set from Cork singer and songwriter, Jack O'Rourke, whose debut album, Dreamcatcher, was one of last year's best. As part of the Ballincollig Winter Music Festival.
The Orb
The Limelight Belfast 10pm £16.90 theorb.com
Twenty-five years after the release of their classic debut album, The Orb hit the road to demonstrate what Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld sounds like with a quarter century of hard living under the bonnet. An album full of psychedelic wig-outs and electronic experimentation, it was the one which made The Orb unlikely hit-makers thanks to Little Fluffy Clouds. Orb main mover Alex Paterson is joined at The Orb controls these days by Thomas Fehlmann.
Nightcap
Bar Tengu Dublin 10.30pm €12/€10 facebook.com/nightcapdublin
The first outing for David Grier and Michael Ryan's new Nightcap venture features a visit from Kim Ann Foxman. Previously a vocalist with Hercules & Love Affair, Foxman has turned her attention recently to crafting mixes full of soulful house boasting vintage vibes and club-friendly textures. Aside from trips to Europe to play at Nightcap (and also at Berlin's Panorama Bar this weekend), you'll find her in situ at Good Room in Brooklyn. Support from Cáit Fahey (Dip).
Danse, Morob
Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ends Jan 28 7.30pm €18-22 projectartscentre.ie
The remains of a Republican hunger striker have gone missing, and nobody – including his daughter – knows where the body is buried. "Morob is not in his grave," announces Olwen Fouéré in Laurent Gaudé's new play, translated from French by its co-director and star, and what might have been the premise for a political thriller becomes instead a meditation on people dissolving between myth and reality, bodies sublimated into symbols. Fouéré plays Morob's daughter as an ethereal avenger, attended (like Hecate) by a pack of dogs, while the material world and its concrete history seems to distend as though in a dream. That is the play's concern: real people become legends at the expense of their humanity.
SATURDAY
Mother River
Yan Wang Preston. Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar, Dublin. Jan 28- March 5, galleryofphotography.ie
When Yan Wang Preston settled in Yorkshire, she began to think about making work centred on China, and came up with her extraordinary, four- year project, Mother River. Plotting 63 points at 100km intervals along the course of the Yangtse River, she set about photographing what she found at those locations with a large format camera, from snowy Tibet to the sea. She discusses her project at the gallery on Chinese New Year, Saturday January 28 at 12pm.
Joey Negro
The Hangar Dublin 10.30pm €17.50 hangardublin.ie
Dave Lee has proven to be a handy man when it comes to monikers and alter-egos over the years, though it's as Joey Negro that he's had the biggest impact. A producer with a serious yen for disco, Negro has been involved in hundreds of releases and remixes over the years, taking in A-list pop stars (Pet Shop Boys, Mariah Carey, Take That etc) and cutting-edge house records. In the last few years, he has continued his soul, jazz, disco and funk powerhouse billing with a string of well-received compilations and cuts like Freebass. Support from Leigh Farrell.
SUNDAY
Jerjen/Guilfoyle 4tet
JJ Smyths, Dublin, 8pm, €10, jjsmyths.com
Swiss bassist Rafael Jerjen and Dublin guitarist Chris Guilfoyle – two musicians who are making waves on their respective scenes – met while studying at the Hochschule Luzern in Switzerland. This renewal of their acquaintance, in the company of Venezuelan pianist Leopoldo Osio and drummer Brendan Doherty, typifies the quality and cosmopolitanism of the current Dublin jazz scene.
Banjo & Bovril Festival
Harbour Bar, Bray Also Wed-Sat Free theharbourbar.ie
Bray gets in on the folk act this weekend with its own rootsy festival running all weekend. Among the acts playing on this last day are NC Lawlor, Max Greenwood and Jamie Duff. All gigs are free. Best call in sick to work now so.
MONDAY
The Pillowman
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin Ends Feb 5 7.30pm (Sat & Sun mat 2.30pm) €24.50 gaietytheatre.ieKaturian K Katurian, an author of grisly fantasies, is admirably succinct with his own plot synopsis: "A writer in a totalitarian state is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child murders that are happening in his town." Like that arch self-reference, Martin McDonagh's 2003 play creates an artful mesh between reality and fiction. Decadent Theatre Company, entrusted last year with the play's belated Irish premiere, respond to it with a clear sighted and brilliantly imaginative production, set in a narrow stone cell that rises up like a fairy tale tower. It is hard to say what, if anything, is "real" in this strange and septic world.
Are the ghoulish fairy tales that Katurian spins (Grimm Brothers stories recut by Quentin Tarantino, essentially) the product of his own unhappy childhood or have they inspired his damaged brother, Michal, towards dreadful acts? The Pillowman may be a sustained satire on writing itself, but it teases at questions of the thought police too, and what is permissible to darkly imagine. Decadent’s production, now undertaking a national tour, makes it all enjoyable, probing and fantastically unsettling.
TUESDAY
Between Dog and Wolf
A group show curated by Maeve Mulrennan. Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick St, Galway Until March 4 galwayartscentre.ie
The French expression, L'heure entre chien et loup, is pointed but ambiguous, but usually refers to the twilight moment when things are uncertain and abrupt transformations, in both perception and behaviour, are possible. Maeve Mulrennan invited a number of artists to respond to the idea, with either something they were working on, or something especially made. Emma Finn, Hannah Fitz, Helen Mac Mahon, Nicos Nicolaou, Karen Roulstone, Anna Spearman and Rory Tangney respond to the sentiment.
WEDNESDAY
Kaleidoscope
Sugar Club, Dublin, 8pm, €15.50, facebook.com/kaleidoscope night
Since 2009, the genre-blind Kaleidoscope series has been championing eclectic programming, mixing contemporary classical, jazz, improv and more besides with brave abandon. For their 100th edition (bravo!), curators Lioba Petrie and Karen Dervan have pulled together a typically diverse programme, including Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstien, a world premiere by David Stalling, the Spackling Band and the Dublin Guitar Quartet.
THURSDAY
Interference, with Glen Hansard
Opera House Cork 7.30pm €35 (sold out) corkoperahouse.ie
Fergus O'Farrell (who passed away 12 months ago) was a songwriter and singer of supreme talent, and his band Interference is rightly viewed as one of Ireland's great overlooked music acts of the past 25 years. This concert (there are more next week) celebrates the man's golden touch, and sees longtime pal Glen Hansard corral a bunch of friends/musicians into delivering something that could be very special indeed.
exmagician
Whelan's Dublin 8pm €15 whelanslive.com
Formed by James Smith and Danny Todd out of the ashes of Belfast band Cashier No 9, exmagician released one of last year's most underrated albums (Scan the Blue), so it's good to see that lack of awareness from the general public isn't keeping them back. Note to general public – go see/hear/ experience.
Subtech x 909
Social & Co Limerick 10.30pm €14 twitter.com/daxj
2016 was a cracking year for London-born and Berlin-based producer Dax J. Two excellent EPs, the Lost in Bermulda EP recorded with Cleric and the heavy-hitting Illusions of Power EP released on his own Monnom Black label, demonstrated his skills as a techno shaper and as someone who knows all about rich, mesmeric, powerful sounds. Support from Jake Nolan and Maedbh O'Connor.
Parc du Souvenir
Stephen Brandes. Oonagh Young Gallery, 1 James Joyce St, Dublin. Until February 24th oonaghyoung.com
Stephen Brandes has become associated with big, sprawling, episodic narrative drawings on floor vinyl, telling tales of migration and displacement. Here he looks at two people, polymath Patrick Geddes who influenced city planning in Edinburgh, and the writer Günter Grass, whose hometown of Danzig, was destroyed during the second World War. A video piece features a fictional character, Alfred Sitzfleisch, who fantasises about crossing paths with both of them.
Sarah Neufeld
Bello Bar, Dublin, 8pm, €15/12, homebeat.ie
Montreal violinist Sara Neufeld is best known as a member of Arcade Fire, but she has also released two critically acclaimed solo albums in the last few years which touch on minimalism, meditation and improvisation. This intimate solo concert, presented by Dublin indy hipsters Ensemble Music and Homebeat is bound to sell out so act fast.
