ArtScape: As Patricia Quinn prepares to leave her desk in Merrion Square next week, the Arts Council is getting down to the task of identifying its "principles and priorities for the future".
Presumably, this means devising a strategy to replace the Arts Plan 2002-2006 which, the new council announced on Thursday, March 11th, was to be "set aside" - precipitating Quinn's resignation as director the following day.
At a special meeting last Tuesday, the council set up a working group of council members and executive staff to tease out these "principles and priorities".
The council members who are part of the group are Patrick Sutton, Rosaleen Linehan, Willie Doherty and Noelle Campbell Sharpe. The three senior staff who will complete the working party are arts development director Mary Cloake; arts programme director, John O'Kane and arts policy director, Seamus Crimmins.
It was also announced that Mary Cloake will take on the role of acting director until a new appointment is made. It is expected that the post will be advertised here and abroad later this month.
A statement said the work of the newly established group is "intended to enable the council to publish, over the summer period, a clear basis for its 2005 spending. The council expressed a commitment to work closely with the arts community as it plans for the future over the coming months".
The council also let it be known that an "action plan 2004 - which forms the basis of the Council's work for this year - will be implemented as planned". Although this plan was adopted last December, its detail will not be available until April 14th, when it will be put up on the council website (www.artscouncil.ie). The reason given is that it is a substantial document in need of editing.
Meanwhile, care is being taken in the use of language, with emphasis on the fact that it is "intended" to set the Arts Plan aside. Why? Perhaps because, as Patricia Quinn pointed out in her resignation announcement, the plan is actually Government policy, and only Government can set policy aside.
Looking ahead to the 2005 spending, the council must be wondering whether, when it gets down to making its case for a funding increase in the next Budget, it can also lay claim to the type of substantial resources that this year are going into a number of individual one-off projects. Almost €7 million is this year available to the sector through the China-Ireland cultural exchange, the EU presidency cultural programme and the ReJoyce celebrations. A nice sum which, if passed to the council next year - with an increase in this year's €53 million - would go a long way to giving substance to those "principles and priorities".
Irish composers' influences
The National Concert Hall's annual obeisance to Irish composers will run this year from tomorrow until next Thursday, with five concerts featuring the music and choices of Eric Sweeney, Brian Irvine, John McLachlan, Kevin Volans and Marian Ingoldsby, writes Michael Dervan.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this series over the years has been the way the composers, asked to focus on their own work and the music that has influenced them, have left other Irish composers almost completely out of the picture.
In the opening programme of choral, brass and organ music Eric Sweeney (tomorrow) presents his own work in the context of music by Tavener, Messiaen and Britten. Brian Irvine, who straddles the world of jazz and contemporary music, will be heard in performances with his own ensemble on Monday, including works by Cornelius Cardew, John Zorn and incorporating pieces by Cecil Taylor and Sergei Kuryokhin into one of his own. John McLachlan's pieces for piano and string quartet (Tuesday) rub shoulders with Stravinsky, Kurtág and Viñao. Kevin Volans (Wednesday) has chosen an electro-acoustic classic by his teacher Stockhausen Kontakte for piano and percussion to follow three of his own piano studies and his Akhroda for percussion.
Marian Ingoldsby (Thursday) is the composer who has chosen to range farthest outside Europe, adding composers from Japan (Maki Ishii) and the US (Copland and Cowell), to ones from Austria (Webern), France (Messiaen), and Spain (Mompou) in a programme of works for recorder, violin, cello and piano.
All of the concerts start at 8 p.m., with pre-concert talks at 6.45 p.m. Full details and booking from the National Concert Hall at 01-417 0000
Deposition docudrama
A new play based on the child sex abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese is causing a furore in the US, writes Ian Kilroy, in Boston.
American playwright Michael Murphy's Sin: A Cardinal Deposed draws on legal testimony by Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace in 2002 because of his alleged mishandling of abuse in the Boston church.
Staged to critical claim by Chicago's Bailiwick Arts Centre, the piece has been described by the Chicago Tribune as a "shockingly effective" docudrama.
Using only dialogue drawn from legal testimony, playwright Murphy culled the entire piece from 11,000 pages of the cardinal's depositions, as well as from hundreds of newspaper reports.
Survivors of church sex abuse in Boston have been flying to Chicago to view the play.
Many have reacted to the piece with anger, shouting expletives at the actor playing Cardinal Law. Other audience members, however, have reacted with tears, breaking down during the performance.
To date, the archdiocese of Boston has declined to comment on the play, which offers a very unflattering portrayal of Cardinal Law, albeit in his own words.
Boston residents will get a chance to see the play when it comes to the city in May.
Galway loses funding
The Galway-based Western Writers' Centre - Ionad Scríbhneoirí Chaitlín Maude - has lost its appeal for funding from the Arts Council, writes Lorna Siggins.
As reported several weeks ago in Artscape, the centre had its initial funding application turned down for the second year in a row. The centre, founded by Fred Johnston, has been involved in establishing the first writer-in-residence at a Galway hospital. It has also set up a writing-in-the-workplace project.
The centre receives some support from Galway City Council and Galway County Council - both of which have established their own new writers-in-residence. The centre's overall scheme is run by FÁS, while Foras na Gaeilge will finance certain events during its November winter school.
Fred Johnston is very disappointed, and puzzled. He says that the rejection letter from former Arts Council director, Patricia Quinn, was sent to him prior to Arts Council representatives paying the centre its first visit. He believes the council is more interested in "preserving a workable status quo than supporting a new initiative".
The "old" Arts Council policy seemed to favour a council-dictated "civil service-run arts world, where artists played second fiddle to non-creative administrators. I truly look forward to a change in this sort of attitude," Johnston says.
A Beethoven marathon
It has been a long time since all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas were performed in Ireland as a cycle, writes Michael Dervan. John O'Conor made history at the National Concert Hall two decades ago when he spread the works over nine programmes, presented in three groups of three over a period of eight months.
Few people back then would have imagined that Ireland's next complete cycle would take place in west Cork. But that's how it has turned out, since a series begun by Hugh Tinney in Dublin
was cut short by the winding
down of the RDS's concert promotion activities.
Tinney, however, is back with Beethoven, as he's one of the three pianists engaged in the cycle that Francis Humphrys has planned for Bantry House this Easter. He's sharing the honours with Philippe Cassard and Joanna MacGregor, and he's the player who is taking on the challenges of that Everest among the sonatas, the Hammerklavier.
Humphrys has opted for an interesting format which will see each of the players performing in each of the recitals, allowing audiences to compare and contrast the playing styles as they follow the development of Beethoven's musical thinking - the works are being presented, as they were by O'Conor, in chronological order.
With three players involved, Humphrys has opted to present the sonatas over just six nights, something that would tax the stamina of all but the toughest of constitutions were just a single player involved.
The series runs from Easter Saturday, April 10th, until Thursday 15th, and the starting time each evening is 7 p.m.. Details and booking from West Cork Music on 027-52789.
New patrons for Camerata
A rare event in cultural patronage was announced this week by the Northern Ireland-based orchestra, Camerata Ireland, founded by pianist Barry Douglas. Queen Elizabeth and the President, Mrs McAleese, have become joint patrons of the orchestra, which was founded in 1999.
The honour was announced by Camerata Ireland at a special performance in Belfast's W5 hosted by Chris MacCabe and Ray Bassett, the Joint Secretaries of the British Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
Artistic director Barry Douglas expressed delight with the honour. "Camerata Ireland represents all that is positive and good about musicians in Ireland," he said. "We have built an orchestra which is fast developing an international reputation for excellence. We have toured North and South America . . . We have placed Irish classical music on the world stage."
This week they travelled to Poland for the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw and in June they will play in China as part of the cultural exchange programme announced this week.