Five-year-old festival growing fast

ArtScape: Belfast's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival is five years old, writes Jane Coyle

ArtScape: Belfast's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival is five years old, writes Jane Coyle. In that short time, it has established itself as a keystone of the city's arts calendar, bringing life, colour and cutting-edge events to the historic area surrounding St Anne's Cathedral.

But, as director Sean Kelly admits, it has become something of a victim of its own success. At last week's launch, he paid tribute to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for its financial support - £30,000 in revenue funding and £25,000 from its Lottery funds. An additional £22,000 has come from Laganside Corporation and £10,000 from local business, an area which Kelly acknowledges needs to be developed.

The main beneficiary of the festival's rising star is, of course, Belfast itself, a fact which receives scant acknowledgment in the city council's meagre £6,000 contribution. Councillor Eoin O'Broin, chairman of the arts sub-committee, is a stalwart supporter of the festival and voiced optimism that this unsatisfactory situation could be rectified sooner rather than later.

"The problem - if it is a problem - is that we have grown very quickly," says Kelly, "and the mechanisms of the council have been unable to respond. Funding is based on what is received in the previous year. As we came into the loop from a low base a relatively short time ago, there is little leverage for our allocation to be adjusted. Still, the present team in the arts and heritage department do give the impression that they are listening to us, which was not the case in previous years. There is a lot of consultation going on with the sector, which is good thing."

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This year's programme is the most international to date, featuring artists from Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jamaica, the Philippines, Slovenia and the US as well as Ireland and Britain. European Accession Day (on May 1st) will be marked by a concert on May 3rd by Terra Folk, a musical sensation from new member state Slovenia, and will be served up with food from other incoming EU countries.

The programme is structured around a series of mini-festivals of comedy, traditional music, visual arts, words and ideas, Americana, and bizarre special events such as Bill Drummond's Soupline. The Festival of Fools is an international celebration of street theatre; Cheap Date, organised in conjunction with the British Council, is a showcase for local bands to perform in front of 35 invited producers; the festival of pop culture is headed by the screening of previously unreleased footage of the 1965 Rolling Stones tour of Ireland, introduced by Andrew Loog Oldham, who managed the band in its early days.

The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival runs from April 29th to May 9th. Programme details and bookings from the festival office (tel: 048-90232403), Belfast Welcome Centre (tel: 048-90246609) or online at www.cqaf.com.

Composers' chorus

A new organisation, the Young Composers' Collective (YCC), has been formed to address a range of issues facing young composers in Ireland today, writes Michael Dervan. The man behind the venture is the composer and performer, David Flynn, who is currently on a postgraduate course supervised by Malcolm Singer at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Flynn's analysis, which is summarised in an article in the Journal of Music in Ireland, is pretty bleak. The cash-strapped Association of Irish Composers (AIC), effectively the trade union for composers, has assessment criteria which, he says, exclude a number of young composers, although this is not a problem that has personally affected him. AIC's executive director, John McLachlan, on the other hand, says that most of the young composers who are not members of AIC have simply never applied.

Flynn was refused representation by the Contemporary Music Centre (CMC), "Ireland's national archive and resource centre for new music", on the basis that "it is still too early in your career to be accepted for representation - composers are normally at or past PhD stage when accepted". But as the composer points out, such rules could well have excluded the likes of Schoenberg and Satie at the age when they wrote what are now their best-known works. Composers not officially represented by CMC may receive help from the organisation but cannot have their works held in the CMC library or be listed in the composers' section of the CMC website.

The YCC is to be a broad-based organisation, with membership open, without screening, to composers aged 35 or under, working in all genres, who were born or are resident in Ireland. Among its immediate aims are the promotion of concerts and workshops and the assembling of information resources.

Welcoming the new organisation, Donnacha Dennehy, fellow-composer and founder of Crash Ensemble, says: "I just think it's a great idea. He's right. It's been tough for young composers. He's setting up an organisation to fight their corner. It's necessary. The main institutional support is for more established composers." The YCC can be contacted at frisbee@oceanfree.net.

At the same time, another composer, SiobháCleary, who has also welcomed the new organisation, is calling for a public debate on issues "concerning the relationship between the Contemporary Music Centre, the Arts Council and composers", which include "the distribution of Arts Council funding" and what Cleary calls "the lack of discourse between the Arts Council, the CMC and composers". Anyone interested in pursuing this debate can contact Cleary at siobhancleary@eircom.net.

Cork birthday welcomes

This year's Cork International Choral Festival not only marks the 50th anniversary of the event but will coincide with the May weekend of festivities to celebrate the accession of new member-states to the EU.

It is expected that up to 5,000 performers will visit Cork during the festival. This year's Fleischmann International Trophy Competition, which takes place in the City Hall on the EU Day of Welcomes, will, appropriately enough, feature performances by groups from Estonia, Latvia and the Czech Republic.

The festival will begin on Wednesday, April 28th, with a celebration concert of the music of Aloys Fleischmann performed by the combined forces of the School of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Fleischmann Choir, Madrigal 75, the Vanbrugh Quartet and guest soloists. Other events include performances by the National Chamber Choir, Cór Ban Chúil Aodha, La Gioia from Belgium, Seraphim from Cork, and Gloria from Dublin. As well as Cork City Hall, concerts will take place in St Fin Barre's Cathedral and a special "after dark" concert featuring Philomela, a Finnish female choir, will take place in the North Cathedral.

Peisl for Daghdha

Daghdha Dance Company has acquired the talents of Nicole Peisl, who comes to Ireland from Ballett Frankfurt with many years of experience in professional dancing, performance and choreography.

Born in Austria, Peisl received her dance education at the Academy in Frankfurt/Main and at the Rotterdamse Dansacademie (Netherlands). Following a two-year course in choreography at the Rotterdamse Dansacademie in 1996, Peisl began to choreograph her own works.

Between 1996 and 2000 she choreographed her work in collaboration with production houses in The Hague, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. She also provided the choreography in work by Canadian film-maker Daniel Conrad and in the theatre piece, Kameraden, by Ralph Hinterding, for the Schauspiel Frankfurt.

In 2000 Peisl joined Ballett Frankfurt, where she has featured in various roles in the company and worked with choreographer William Forsythe.

Four awards for TG4

A short film commissioned by TG4 picked up awards at festivals on both sides of the Atlantic last weekend. Yu Ming is Ainm Dom won the Best International Comedy at the Aspen Shortsfest Film Festival in Colorado and also took the Frank Copplestone (First-Time Director) Award at the Celtic Film and Television Festival in Dundee, Scotland. Two other TG4 films also won awards at the festival.

Dublin film-maker Daniel O'Hara wrote and directed Yu Ming, which tells the story of a young man from China who learns Irish in preparation for a trip to Ireland. On arrival in Dublin, he is puzzled to find that nobody understands him. It has already won several other film festival awards and had a commercial release.

The Aspen Shortsfest is recognised as one of the world's top showcases for short films and video. Some 1,500 entries were received for this year's festival.

The International Celtic Film and TV Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary in Dundee this year. TG4 had it most successful Celtic Festival, winning three of the main prizes. In addition to the award for Yu Ming, the channel won Best Arts Documentary for Harry Clarke - Dorchadas i Solas (a profile of the controversial stained-glass artist) and Best Feature Documentary for Frank Ned agus Busy Lizzie (see TV review, W 14).

Writers write in

TCD School of English is seeking submissions for a Drama and Short Fiction Workshop with playwright Anne Devlin, who is the college's current Arts Council Writer Fellow. The workshops will be held twice a week over a four-week period (Wednesdays and Thursdays at TCD, beginning on Wednesday, April 28th at 7 p.m.). Applicants should send name, address, telephone number and e-mail address, along with a short sample of work and a brief curriculum vitae (including details of any workshops attended) to: Writers' Workshop, Oscar Wilde Centre, School of English, 21 Westland Row, Trinity College, Dublin 2; or e-mail lfoley@tcd.ie. Closing date is next Friday.

Lectures at Hugh Lane

The first of a Dublin City Gallery (Hugh Lane) series of lectures on current art practice, curation and the role of the museum in the 21st century takes place next Thursday. Nicolas Bourriaud, who will give a lecture entitled 'Contemporary Art and Postproduction', is co-director of the Palais de Tokyo and an art theorist. The Palais de Tokyo has been compared to New York's PS1 and described as "a fake artists' squat".

Future lectures in the series will be presented by Prof David Carrier, of Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Art; Stephen Snoddy, new director of Baltic; and Roger Buergel, artistic director of Documenta XII, 2007.

For details, e-mail ckennedy@hughlane.ie. Next Thursday's opening event is at 7 p.m. and is free to the public.