Rock/pop
Tony Clayton-Lea
Looking into a crystal ball for events not yet announced or confirmed might be a mug's game, but it's fun. While there are some major concerts still to be announced, there are rumours of more open air events: a vast enclosure close to Kells, Co Meath, has been mooted as a front runner for the Let's-Bring-The-Reading-Festival-To-Ireland campaign, and while it's conceivable that such an occurrence could fracture an already over-subscribed market, its success depends - as usual - on the headline acts.
The big names for Witnness haven't yet been announced, but when they are, and irrespective of what acts are nabbed, it's safe to say that tickets will be hoovered up. Like image-snapping mobile phones, Witnness has grabbed the youth market interest with its innovative, customer-friendly and punter-interactive format. How long it can remain as the guiding force of popular musical tastes is open to debate, but for the moment it reigns supreme.
Still on the rumour mill, it seems it's all over bar the press releases and advertisements for The Rolling Stones to arrive in Ireland next summer. It has been reported that a major rock act might be paying a visit to Vicar St, and although sources at Aiken Promotions cannot confirm or deny this, the rumours of Mick 'n' Keef shimmying at the Thomas Street venue refuse to go away.
So, which major acts have confirmed? Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band return to Ireland on Saturday, May 31st (RDS Arena, but could he also be playing a warm-up or cool-down gig at Vicar St?) and if reports of his current tour are anything to go by, it'll be a belter of a concert. Springsteen's cachet is higher than it has been in years as credibility of his post-9/11-themed album, The Rising, has blended with renewed commercial success.
Less than a month later, Bon Jovi bring the Bounce Tour to Lansdowne Road (Friday, June 20th), and while, personally, it's difficult to get excited about the band's brand of generic radio-friendly rock, there's no doubting they have an immense following here, as this will be the third time in as many years that the New Jersey band have performed in this country. REM have been confirmed for Marley Park for July 16th, as part of their 2003 world tour.
So far, the biggest act to have been announced is Robbie Williams, whose appearance at Phoenix Park (Saturday, August 9th) is bound to cause major upset in the bank balances of many parents. Yet, as Williams has proven time and again in Ireland over the past four years, he is one of the few consummate rock/pop performers around. Will his ego (and the screens) be big enough to turn the Park into a cosy venue? Possibly not, and frankly we're unsure why he didn't have the good sense to play a smaller outside venue for a few nights. But then, the price of fame does funny things to the mind.
The early part of the year sees Ireland playing host to Counting Crows (The Point, January 18th) and Popstars' Liberty X (Vicar St, April 3rd). Other arrivals in the first quarter of 2003 include John Squire (Limelight, Belfast, January 24th and The Ambassador, Dublin, January 25th), Jackson Browne (The Olympia, Dublin, March 11th), Chris Rea (The National Stadium, Dublin, February 17th) and Tracy Chapman (The Waterfront, Belfast, March 18th and The Olympia, Dublin, March 20th). Perfrormance artist Laurie Anderson, of O Superman fame, also pays a visit to Vicar Street on May 3rd.
Is there a downside? Absolutely - the most worrying being the amount of acts on promoters' open-air bills that return to Ireland within a matter of months. This seems a shockingly calculated act on behalf of the promoters, who are possibly aware that ticket sales for their events would decrease if, say, a Foo Fighters, Nickelback or Doves fan were made aware that these bands would be arriving once more on Irish soil within three to four months (Foo Fighters, November 27th last, having played Witnness in July; Nickelback, December 4th last, having been on the Slane bill at the end of August; Doves, December 13th; also at Slane). It's something that will hardly stop, but really, for the music fan it's simply not fair.
A personal wish list for 2003? The Rolling Stones and/or Bruce Springsteen to play Vicar St (easily - and still - the best music venue in the country).
Jazz
Ray Comiskey
At the moment, the jazz calendar for next year looks particularly mouth-watering, especially for aficionados of jazz piano. A major piano trio series is planned by The Improvised Music Company, which is also developing an exchange relationship with Henry's, the Edinburgh jazz club. In Cork, the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival already has some interesting names lined up, as does the Triskel. And though there is no confirmation of what Note Productions is doing for 2003, - it's expected that plans will be posted on the organisation's website (www.note.ie) in the New Year.
The piano trio is generally regarded as the jazz equivalent of classical music's string quartet - an intimate crucible capable of encompassing a variety of musical experiences. That would be cause enough to make the IMC's Piano Trio series at the National Concert Hall's John Field Room the biggest project planned for the early part of the year, but there are other reasons just as compelling.
First, there is the sheer scale; five concerts in the first half of the year, with three more planned for next autumn. Then there is the quality; it will be opened by the great Bobo Stenson trio, on Thursday, January 16th, to be followed over the succeeding months by three outstanding US exponents of the form.
On Wednesday, February 26th, Ethan Iverson's The Bad Plus, one of the finest and most adventurous working trios in the US, will be here. Equally distinctive is the lyrical, richly-textured piano of Marc Copland, whose trio is due on Thursday, March 27th, while the fourth confirmed trio will be led by the exuberantly inventive Kenny Werner.
It's intended to fill the fifth concert slot, also in May, with a European trio. The names being suggested at the moment are Bojan Zulfikarpasic or Jean Michel Pilc. No names are available yet for the autumn piano trio series.
The IMC will also bring over another heavyweight trio in January. Whelan's is the venue for the return of the great Austrian guitarist, Wolfgang Muthspiel, who will have two celebrated Americans with him - bassist Marc Johnson and the remarkable drummer, Brian Blade; they perform on Monday, January 13th.
Whelan's is the venue, too, for a British and Irish young - and old - lions group. Saxophonists Pete King, Julian Arguelles and Michael Buckley will be backed by bassist Jeremy Brown and drummer Stephen Keogh when they give a concert there on Sunday, February 2nd.
No venue is confirmed yet for another IMC venture. This is the group led by baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, with Joe Locke (vibes), Dave Kikowski (piano), John Benitez (bass) and Ron Blake (drums). Cuber will be remembered for a hugely enjoyable, blues-drenched concert he gave at Whelan's with Tommy Halferty, Justin Carroll and Conor Guilfoyle; he is due to play in Dublin on Saturday,
March 8th.
It's also intended to develop more international playing connections for local jazz musicians at the regular IMC Sunday sessions at JJ Smyth's. Names due in to play with local rhythm sections include Adam Kolker (tenor) from New York's Vanguard Orchestra, and the Scottish bop trumpeter, Colin Steele; dates are January 19th and February 9th respectively. April 5th in JJs will see The Hub, a trio from New York's downtown scene; later that month a group including the excellent British guitarist, Phil Robson, will be there.
If that isn't enough, the ESB Dublin Jazz Festival is confirmed for the weekend of Friday, July 4th, which suggests the event will be more concentrated than the week-long spread it had in the past. The IMC is also bringing back its OpenJazz Open Day, most likely in late March, and is organising a contemporary jazz and world music strand as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival, as well as having an input into what is hoped to be an even stronger Bray Jazz Festival next year.
It's also involved in a series of world music performance masterclasses scheduled for the Chester Beatty Gallery, to tie in with the venue's collection of Islamic art and calligraphy.
The Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, which had a hugely successful 25th anniversary in 2002, has already named a Three Tenors band for next year; saxophonists Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman, plus a rhythm section. Programme director Jack McGouran is also hoping to have pianist Carla Bley, with Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow and Billy Drummond, the literate Chicago singer, Patricia Barber, Sweden's Jacob Karlzon Trio with singer Viktoria Tolstoy, pianist Danilo Perez's trio and Ethan Iverson's The Bad Plus. All are subject to final contract, but there will be more details posted at www.corkjazzfestival.com next month.
Cork's Triskel will be taking, as part of short tours, some names previously mentioned, among them the Bobo Stenson Trio (Friday, January 17th) and The Hub (Tuesday, April 8th). It will also have the Lynne Arriale Trio (Tuesday, March 25th); pianist Arriale is coming here to do a Music Network tour during that time.
Theatre
Christine Madden
Despite jitters caused by the new, lean Budget and Arts Council cutbacks, Irish theatre companies hope to go ahead as planned with their productions this year.
The Gate is kicking off its 75th anniversary year with Waiting for Godot; the gala performance takes place on January 5th, 50 years to the day from when it was first performed in the Theatre de Babylone in Paris. Starring Conor Lovett, Barry McGovern, Johnny Murphy and Alan Stanford, tickets for the gala evening, at €50 a seat, will help finance the Gate's building programme. As well as continuing with a new version of Molière's The Misanthrope and Tennessee Williams's Eccentricities of a Nightingale, the Gate will present the world première of Crestfall, written by Mark O'Rowe and directed by Garry Hynes.
At the National Theatre, plans for the coming year remain under wraps until its annual announcement in February. But it's a move into the family way with the initial productions of the year: Arthur Miller's All My Sons in the Abbey, and a children's production, Sons and Daughters, opening in the Peacock.
Even with the impending Arts Council cuts, Raymond Keane of Barabbas says the company is going ahead with a large-scale co-production - with the Galway Arts Festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival - of Hurl, a new play by Charlie O'Neill. This piece will focus on hurling - and racial tensions - in present Ireland, with a multi-ethnic cast, and a possible international tour. Barabbas will continue in clowning mode with Foolproof Screen a project in conjunction with a workshop at Queen's University. The project will take to the streets, hoping to release the clown within all of us, no less.
Blue Raincoat sets sail with a new play by Malcolm Hamilton. The production bears the working title The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst and is about a man who participated in a round-the-world race in a ramshackle trimaran, the Teignmouth Electron, in 1968. The ship was later found deserted in the mid-Atlantic. The play opens in Sligo, before going on the road to Galway, Warsaw and Berlin.
The life and times of Charlie Haughey will be aired again next year, with Yew Tree Theatre producing Charlie, by John Breen. The play charts Haughey's ascent to power in the 1970s, his hiatus and final downfall in the 1990s. This new Irish alternative to Macbeth will tour in April and May. Yew Tree will also produce The Russle and Crow by Niamh McGrath and stage a reading of a new play commissioned from Neil Donnelly.
Corcadorca plans a site-specific piece about the closure of the Ford and Dunlop factories in 1983 and its ripple effect on the economy and society of Cork. This piece will be part of the city's Midsummer Arts Festival. Pat Kiernan will direct the as-yet-unwritten piece. In the autumn, Corcadorca will produce Snap, a new play by Ger Bourke, a previous winner of their biannual writing competition.
Finders Keepers, a new play by Peter Sheridan, will appear at Draíocht this February. Directed by Martin Drury, it focuses on the world of schoolboy pranksters and the "North Wall Witches" on the Dublin's Royal Canal.
At Fishamble, Jim Culleton is planning a season of short pieces after holding a competition calling for plays of up to 10 minutes in duration. They are still sorting through the 200-odd entries received, and hope to stage the plays in Project in May. For the autumn, Fishamble will produce a new work by Michael Collins called Tadhg Stray Wanders In.
A South-African drama, My Children, My Africa, by Athol Fugard, will tour Ireland during late February and March. This Galloglass production, in collaboration with Amnesty International, directed by Theresia Guschlbauer, tells the story of the relationship of two young people across the racial divide. Island Theatre Company, feeling the financial pinch, hopes to tour The Quiet Moment by Mike Finn and will produce Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come in the summer.
Two new plays come to Project early in the year. To round off its trilogy of adapted plays (the first two being The World's Wife and Lady Susan), Inis Theatre will present To Kill a Dead Man, a piece inspired by gothic and film noir. In March, Rough Magic will present Declan Hughes's new play, Shiver; and in April, a new theatre company, Sabooge, will present Hatched, a physical theatre work which was performed at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2002.
After a lovely, psychologically probing Hansel and Gretel, Storytellers Theatre Company is throwing its back into a production of Antigone, due to tour in February and March. This new adaptation by Conall Morrison is set in the Middle East, with the atmosphere of strife, glowing resentment and thirst for revenge that this background feeds.
Following on from a family production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, adapted by Glyn Robbins, in early 2003, Red Kettle plans to put on two new plays this coming year. In May, a piece by Brian Foster, Mama, Jim and Elvis, will première first in New York, then return to Waterford for its Irish run. The play will be co-produced with the Irish Arts Centre in New York. A piece by Wexford writer Paul O'Brien, Happy Like a Fool, follows in the autumn.
In addition to Shiver, directed by Lynn Parker, Rough Magic is developing a breakthrough music project, Improbable Frequency, by Arthur Riordan and Bell Helicopter. This excellent creative combination is putting together the cabaret-style piece set during "the Emergency", and should be "very, very funny", they say. In addition, two of the plays written during their SEEDS project are currently in development.
Dance
Michael Seaver
Despite likely Arts Council cutbacks,dance artists are planning an interesting 2003.
Daghdha Dance Company will present The Yellow Room in Project on January 22nd and on tour through February. The choreography is by outgoing artistic director Yoshiko Chuma, Mary Nunan and Colin Dunne. The underwater photographs of Daghdha's dancers, taken by New York-based artist-photographer Robert Flynt , form a starting point for a series of open-ended stories.
The Institute for Choreography and Dance (ICD) in Cork will present a performance of Deborah Hay's Beauty, with the choreographer alongside Cindy Cummings and Ella Clarke (recently appointed dancer-in-residence in Wexford) on January 28th. It will also present Bog Feature by Belfast choreographer Nick Bryson and a new solo by Anna Gilprin on February 25th.
Cindy Cummings will bring Hitches Bitches and Falling Up, two solos with motion capture systems by Todd Winkler, to the Interactive Art Festival at Browne University in the US in April and has planned a dance/drawing/sculpture with Netherlands-based artists Richard Erickson and Dragan Dedic for later in the year. A French season at ICD in April will present Compagnie Pernette (April 23rd) as well as performances by students from the Paris Conservatoire along with an installation by Herve R.
On May 27th, Coiscéim will première Mermaid, by David Bolger, with music by Conor Lenihan at Project, which will also host a return of Finola Cronin's The Murder Ballads and new works by Rebecca Walters, Julie Lockett and Maireád Vaughan. A Coiscéim/Peacock Theatre co-production, Swept (a quartet for David Bolger, musician Diane O'Keefe, a cello and a brush) has yet to have its dates confirmed.
Dance Theatre of Ireland will embark on an international tour featuring recent works early in the year and will present two new works, one for the World Culture Festival in Dún Laoghaire in August and As a Matter of Fact, a working title for a "dance-u-mentary", with choreography by Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick.
Irish Modern Dance Theatre has commissioned Thomas Lehman to create a new work in the summer and he will present his solo, Distanzos, in February. While Daghdha will be working in water, Fluxusdance will create a work, Endurance, based on the life of Ernest Shackleton, with ice-sculptor Derek Whitticase. Meanwhile, Ríonach Ní Néill will tour her solo, Seandálaíocht, and create a new all-male work about Victorian women.
A wide range of workshops for professionals at ICD include Experiments with Bodily Thresholds with Deborah Hay (January 29th - 31st); Identifying Movement States - A Route Towards Dancing with Nick Bryson (February 15th) and residencies throughout the year. Of interest to both dance and theatre practitioners will be the return of Morleigh Steinberg's butoh-inspired classes in Body-Weather at Dance Theatre of Ireland's Centre for Dance on Wednesday mornings.
The youth dance scene remains as busy as ever. Coiscéim's Ezimotion will enter its final pilot phase in 2003 and one of its participants, Waterford Youth Dance Company, continues to thrive under Libby Seward. Maximum Exposure, from February 14th to 21st, will take dance to the streets and they will also bring dance to the St. Patrick Day's Parade and the Hullabaloo Festival in March. Natalie de Braam's Waterford Youth Ballet will present Ballet for All at Garter Lane Arts Centre in June and The Nutcracker in December, 2003, at The Theatre Royal in Waterford.
In the midlands, the newly-formed Kildare Youth Dance Project will present an inaugural performance in June, Birr Youth Dance Group will première a new work by Cathy O'Kennedy in February and Shawbrook in Longford will begin National Youth Dance workshops with Rebecca Walters for 16 weekends, starting on January 10th, with performances on May 30th and 31st in Backstage Theatre. Shawbrook's Irish National Dance Awards also take place at the Backstage Theatre on Thursday, April 17th. Finally, their annual summer school begins on June 30th.
Coiscéim's film of Hit and Run will be screened at the Dance on Screen Festival at the Lincoln Centre, New York, in January and a new film is expected from Waterford Youth Dance Group as part of an Ireland/Newfoundland exchange project. Work will also begin on a film of Fluxusdance's Súil Eile, directed by Morleigh Steinberg.
Irish dance books which are due in 2003 include an annual journal, Choreographic Encounters and The Voice of Choreography: Dance Makers in Contemporary Ireland by Diana Theodores (both published by ICD), Territorial Claims and a planned new quarterly magazine from Kinetic Reflex, and two new titles from Kalichi.
Film
Michael Dwyer
About Schmidt: Jack Nicholson ought to receive his fourth Oscar for his honest and tender portrayal of a lonely, ageing widower on a journey of self-discovery in this gentle, unsentimental film based of Louis Begley's novel, directed with wit and compassion by Alexander Payne, who made Election. Release date: January 24th.
The Hours: Stephen Daldry's critically acclaimed film of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, adapted by David Hare. It links three women from different eras - Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, Julianne Moore as a 1950s wife and mother, and Meryl Streep as a present-day New Yorker. The accomplished cast also includes Ed Harris, Claire Danes, Allison Janney, Miranda Richardson and Toni Collette. Release date: February 14th.
Veronica Guerin: The second film (after When the Sky Falls) to deal with the life and death of the murdered Dublin journalist features the versatile Cate Blanchett in the title role. "This is an attempt to try to really do honour to Veronica and do justice to her story," says the new film's director, Joel Schumacher. The cast also features Gerard McSorley, Ciaran Hinds, Brenda Fricker, and in a cameo, the ubiquitous Colin Farrell. Release date: May 9th.
The Matrix Reloaded: The eagerly awaited sequel from brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski has a high standard to match or top in their exhilarating 1999 original. Keanu Reeves returns as the reluctant hero, Neo, who has 72 hours before 250,000 probes discover Zion and destroy it and its inhabitants. Release date: May 24th. A second sequel, The Matrix Revolutions, is due in November.
In America: Jim Sheridan's enchanting semi-autobiographical comedy-drama follows the experiences of an Irish immigrant couple (Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton) and their two young daughters (scene-stealing sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger). The film charts their progress through a series of hard knocks to deliver a celebration of love, friendship, innocence and resilience that is, by turns, deeply moving and very funny. Release date: June 21st.
The Hulk: Ang Lee follows the dazzling acrobatics of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with an elaborate re-working of the Incredible Hulk comic strip. Eric Bana, the gifted Australian star of Chopper, plays Bruce Banner, the scientist who leads a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence when he transforms into the Hulk. With Sam Elliott, Nick Nolte and Jennifer Connelly. Release date: June.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: Can this classy action series survive without James Cameron at the helm? Taking over as director is Jonathan Mostow, who showed his flair for the thriller genre with Breakdown. Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as the cyborg, with Nick Stahl replacing Edward Furlong as John Connor, and Kristanna Loken as the new villain, TX, an advanced female terminator. Expect masses of high-tech special effects. After all, the movie has cost more than $170 million. Release date: August 1st.
Ned Kelly: Heath Ledger plays the notorious 19th century Irish-Australian outlaw and folk hero in Gregor Jordan's biopic, which also features Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Rachel Griffiths, Naomi Watts and Irish actor Laurence Kinlan. To judge from some early footage, it looks a lot more ambitious and convincing than the 1970 movie starring Mick Jagger as Kelly. Release date: September 5th.
Intermission: Irish theatre director John Crowley makes his feature film début with a screenplay by playwright Mark O'Rawe. Set in present-day Dublin, it interweaves the experiences of disparate characters, among them an incurable romantic (Cillian Murphy), a petty criminal (Colin Farrell) and a maverick detective (Colm Meaney). With Kelly MacDonald, Michael McElhatton and Deirdre O'Kane. Release date: Autumn.
The Tulse Luper Suitcases: Peter Greenaway's characteristically original and eccentric new work is a trilogy following the fictitious Luper from his childhood in Wales to his extraordinary adventures all over the world - with 92 suitcases. Cast in the lead is J.J. Feild, who impressively played the Michael Caine character as a young man in Last Orders. The eclectic cast will include, among many others, Don Johnson, Ewan McGregor, Deborah Harry, Kathy Bates, Jeff Bridges, Gary Oldman, Nick Nolte and Madonna. Release date: Summer/Autumn.
Kill Bill: Can Quentin Tarantino still cut the mustard? Six years after Jackie Brown, he makes a comeback with an exotic adventure starring Uma Thurman as The Bride, an assassin who emerges from a five-year coma to seek revenge on former colleagues who left her for dead. The cast also includes David Carradine, Daryl Hannah and Lucy Liu. Release date: October.
Cold Mountain: Anthony Minghella's epic film of the Charles Frazier novel features Jude Law as a wounded Confederate soldier making a hazardous journey home to be reunited with his sweetheart (Nicole Kidman). The huge cast includes Renee Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Brendan Gleeson. Release date: Christmas.
Classical
Michael Dervan
Pity the musicians of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. In September, it became clear that their residency at Mahony Hall in The Helix, announced by Bertie Ahern in April 2000, was not going to materialise.
Yet all was not lost. The residency in Dublin's new northside venue was gone, but the orchestra's concerts in the hall would remain, with rehearsals taking place at a refurbished Studio 1 in Donnybrook. However, signs of refurbishment have yet to emerge, as, indeed, have any hints of revitalised concert life for the RTÉCO at The Helix.
The latest explanation is that RTÉ can't get the right dates to put together the sort of series it had envisaged for the orchestra at the new venue. Principal conductor Proinnsías Ó Duinn is in the process of stepping down, so in the current circumstances the lack of clarity about appointing a replacement - the sort of appointment normally flagged years in advance -is alarming. The orchestra is due to play for the final rounds of the Veronica Dunne European Union Singing Competition (Wednesday, January 29th, Thursday 30th, and Saturday, February 1st), but, in general, it looks as if RTÉ has little more in mind for the orchestra apart from things such as Music for Fun, film music gigs, and Abba nostalgia trips.
The Helix has some promotions of its own lined up - the Russian State Opera of Perm in Madama Butterfly (Friday, January 24th, and Saturday 25th); the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under William Boughton (Friday, January 31st), pianist Yonty Solomon (Saturday, February 22nd), the English Chamber Orchestra directed by Stephanie Gonley (Sunday, March 9th), soprano Kiri Te Kanawa (Saturday, April 19th), the EU Chamber Orchestra (Thursday, April 24th), and soprano Lesley Garrett with the Northern Sinfonia (clashing with the finals of the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition on Thursday, May 22nd).
Back at the National Concert Hall, the RTÉCO and the NSO take part in an American Originals Weekend (Friday, February 21st to Sunday 23rd), which covers composers from Gottschalk, Ives and Copland to John Adams, Elliott Carter and Christopher Rouse.
It looks like being a good year for John Adams in Ireland. His Lollapalooza is featured in an NSO Horizons concert on Tuesday, January 28th, his Violin Concerto in the NSO programme for Friday, February 7th, and on Wednesday, May 7th, the San Francisco Symphony opens the second of two NCH programmes under Michael Tilson Thomas with his My Father Knew Charles Ives; this concert also sees the Irish début of young US violinist Hilary Hahn. Other NCH débuts are by the Hong Kong Philharmonic (Saturday, March 1st), violinist Gidon Kremer (Wednesday, March 19th), and cellist Yo-Yo Ma (Wednesday, April 9th, with tickets up to €75), and soprano Barbara Bonney (Saturday, June 21st).
Visitors to the ESB Vogler Spring Festival at Drumcliffe, Co Sligo, (Friday, May 2nd to Monday 5th) include pianist Barry Douglas and German cellist Daniel Müller-Schott, a protégé of Anne-Sophie Mutter who has been much talked about in Belfast after his concerts in 2000 and 2001.
The West Cork Chamber Music Festival (Saturday, June 28th to Sunday, July 6th) features music by Alfred Schnittke played by the composer's pianist widow, Irina, who teams up with his cello-playing biographer, Alexander Ivashkin. Other visitors to Bantry for a typically cornucopian programme include the Silesian String Quartet (playing Górecki, Vasks, and Penderecki), the Petersen String Quartet (Mozart, Schubert, Fauré, Bruckner, Krenek), the Smith String Quartet (in repertoire including George Crumb's Black Angels, and the Irish première of Steve Reich's Different Trains). The Osiris Trio première a new work by Kevin Volans, and Joanna MacGregor and the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet give the first performance of a new piano quintet by Deirdre Gribbin.
The next Killaloe Music Festival (Wednesday, July 23rd to Sunday 27th) will be the first under the Irish Chamber Orchestra's new music director, Nicholas McGegan. His programmes will include the three early Haydn symphonies (Nos 6-8), titled Le matin, Le mid and Le soir, and festival guests will include mezzo soprano Ann Murray and pianist Robert Levin, well-known for his interest in improvisational aspects of 18th-century music.
The Wexford Festival (Thursday, October 16th, to Sunday, November 2nd) will be Luigi Ferrari's last as artistic director. He has chosen a fascinating programme: Granados's Maria del Carmen, Weinberger's Schwanda the Bagpiper, and the Weber/Mahler conflation, Die drei Pintos. Also of interest regarding Wexford is the issue of what orchestra will be playing in the pit, and whether the festival will respond to the criticism that has been voiced at home and abroad about the absence of Irish talent from its productions.
Before that answer is known, Opera Theatre Company will have run a tour of Handel's Ariodante (beginning at the theatre in The Helix on Friday, February 7th), mounted the first Irish production of Ian Wilson's Hamelin (in June), and hosted the Irish première of the Almeida Opera production of Jürgen Simpson's Thwaite (sometime in the autumn). And Opera Ireland will have presented its rescheduled production of Janácek's Jenufa, along with Mozart's Don Giovanni in a season at the Gaiety Theatre, running for nine days from Saturday, April 5th.
Visual Arts
Aidan Dunne
Nick Miller: Figure to Ground, Gallery 1, RHA (January 17th-February 23rd): For a number of years Miller has been making remarkable landscapes in situ, from the vantage point of a mobile studio - a converted truck. His accounts of the landscape throughout the seasons have an incredible, vibrant richness to them. Every square centimetre seems animated by the attention of an omnivorous eye.
Ambit, Limerick City Gallery of Art (January-February): A major show - on the scale of last year's Shinnors - by locally-based Sam Walsh, featuring large-scale abstract paintings plus drawings made over the past two years.
Et In Arcadia Ego, Douglas Hyde Gallery (February 7th-Mar 29th): The quizzical inscription on the tomb in Poussin's quintessential classical painting forms the title for a show of Stephen McKenna's paintings in which classicism is engagingly revisited.
Paul Henry (1876-1958), National Gallery of Ireland (February 19th-May 18th): Henry is the most influential Irish landscape painter of the 20th century, an artist who significantly shaped our enduring vision of the west of Ireland. His paintings are beautiful and extremely popular, so this show in the National Gallery's Millennium Wing, curated by Dr S. B. Kennedy, should prove to be a home-grown blockbuster and Irish exhibition of the year. There are close to 100 paintings gathered from various sources, and a related display of work on paper in the Print Galleries. A teachers' pack will also be distributed to every school. Admission costs €10, and booking has opened.
Lorna Simpson, Irish Museum of Modern Art (February 27th-June 8th): A number of photographic and film works by a leading African-American artist who built her reputation with photo-text and mixed media installation pieces that critically explore questions of racial and sexual identity.
The Pleasure of Compulsive Self-Destruction, Carlow (March): Carlow's Visualise programme has been consistently adventurous and the first outing in 2003 has the Carlow Young Artists' Choir performing a vocal arrangement of the score of a Tom and Jerry cartoon in Finola Jones's project. Public performances and a CD will form part of the package.
Gary Hume, Irish Museum of Modern Art (April 3rd-June 29th): One of the few British artists who actually paints, Hume began by recreating a pair of hospital doors in commercial gloss paint and never looked back. Birds, nudes, animals and similar themes have received the characteristic flat-patterned, high-gloss treatment since.
The South, Project (June): Project's visual arts curator has built up strong links with India, and this show, co-curated with Suman Gopinath, will incorporate specially commissioned projects from a number of leading contemporary Indian artists.
CoBrA, Irish Museum of Modern Art (July 3rd-September 21st): That's a compound derived from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, and it was an important affiliation of European expressionist - figurative not abstract - artists, notably Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, Corneille and Pierre Alechinsky. This show gathers work from the group's exhibitions from 1948-1951.
Gabriel Orozco, Douglas Hyde Gallery (August-September): Quixotic Mexican sculptor Orozco can seem heavy-handed one moment and light as a feather the next. Whether doctoring a Citroën motor car by neatly removing a central chunk of its body or photographing - almost - mundane details, his hallmark is the tongue-in-cheek intervention in everyday reality.
Ursula von Rydingsvard, Butler Gallery Kilkenny (August): To coincide with the Arts Festival, one of the Butler's main shows features work by an American artist who makes spectacular carved wooden composite sculptures, many on a monumental scale, based on vessel-like forms.
Lindsay Sears, Limerick City Gallery of Art (September-October): New installation by the woman who mistook her mouth for a camera - literally using her mouth to make photographs.
Love Letters: A Theme in Dutch 17th Century Genre Painting, National Gallery of Ireland (September-December): A show that has the potential to be a visual and intellectual treat, if enough first-rate works are included. Suddenly, everyone in Dutch paintings by Vermeer, Metsu, Steen et al seemed to be writing, sending, receiving and reading love letters, leaving plenty of room for scholarly speculation.
Patrick Ireland, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery (dates to be confirmed): Aka Brian O'Doherty, who has the rare distinction of having taken Marcel Duchamp's cardiograph and turned it into a work of art. O'Doherty was in on the emergence of Conceptual Art in the US in the late 1960s and has produced a remarkable body of work characterised by its conceptual sophistication and lively engagement with Irish cultural identity.