Preview: Saturday August 13
We're on to the second last day of the festival so here's a quick overview of what's coming up today with a lineup that features two sell out shows from Luka Bloom (at Set Theatre) and Gemma Hayes (at St. John's Priory).
read more...
Preview: Drums Off Chaos
The living legend that is Jaki Liebezeit took time out from rehearsals this afternoon to chat with our Wired Curator Matthew Nolan ahead of tonight's gig in the Set Theatre.
read more...
Review: Agnes Obel
The St Canice’s Cathedral setting, perched as it is above the main streets of Kilkenny, could make many performers look good. But you feel that were Agnes Obel to perform in a cowshed she would still keep the audience enthralled. Still, we’ll certainly take the church setting.
Cian Nugent opens proceedings with his impressive guitar work. His singular style provides a suitable warm-up. From the very beginning the emphasis is on showcasing an impressive technique. The ambitious, epic compositions would suit a dark, animated short. In the Cathedral the music speaks for itself, but a visual backdrop for future shows could be a successful addition.
read more...
Review: Tobias Wolff and David Vann
The biggest crowd I’ve seen so far in the Watergate Theatre were in their seats early for one of the biggest events on the literature strand of the festival.
After being introduced by curator Colm Toíbín, David Vann was up first, his second consecutive appearance at Kilkenny Arts Festival. In fact, he made a joke about how he had begged to return this year such was the fun he had last year. This certainly wasn’t disingenous. And it definitely worked. We had met Mr. Vann for an interviewing at last years event and he was definitely one of the friendliest and most engaging artists that we had the pleasure of interviewing. Which considering he was promoting a book with the dark overtones of Legend Of A Suicide came as somewhat of a surprise to us at the time.
This time around he was reading from his newest novel Caribou Island, a novel he described as about marriage, something he inadvertantly ended up focusing on much to his wife’s chagrin. His affability shone through in his introduction and his two excerpts from the book went down exceedingly well. He stopped suddenly, afraid he was going to risk ruining his book and thanked everyone before walking away to a huge ovation.
Tobias Wolff certainly was the bigger draw here but he was most gracious on giving a rub to David Vann, giving over his introduction to talking about his friendship with Vann and how much he admired his work. The great American writer first read from his 2003 novel Old School, introducing it by talking about the autobiographical elements within. To the delighted of the assembled crowd he finished his reading with an entire short story, the profane and violently funny Bullet In The Brain. He introduced it by saying how he had wanted to call his entire collection at the time Bullet In The Brain but was persuaded otherwise by Colm Toíbín who had told him that his mother would never buy a book with that title. The story went down a storm with the audience and again ensured a huge ovation at its finish.
There were no shortage of questions in the post show Q&A and again Wolff deigned to deflect most questions pointed at him towards Vann. They spoke about the humour in their novels, how short stories manifest themselves and Vann gave a very humourous and insightful description of his struggles to make it as a writer. It was highly illuminating and entertaining stuff. For this reviewer, it was certainly the highlight of the literary strand so far (although I’ve got John Banville’s Benjamin Black reading tonight so I may need to hold my praise) and the packed audience were certainly captivated.
Both writers held court in the foyer of the Watergate signing books for audience members. Suffice to say, they holding court for a very long amount of time.
John
Review: The Great Natural Resources Debate
Considering it was clashing with two other events, there was an impressive turnout for this debate on Ireland's natural resources which just goes to show what a hot topic it is.
The debate's chair, Fintan O'Toole - Assitant Editor of The Irish Times - opened by saying that none of the speakers believe that Ireland has a 'pot of gold' that, in one swoop, will solve all our problems. Instead, he said, they would focus on what we can do to ensure we maximise those resources we do have.
read more...
In Video: Laoise O’Brien
Laoise O'Brien has been seen in many spaces in and around the Kilkenny Arts Festival, my first meeting with her back in Dublin at the launch of the programme this year. On Day 7 (Thursday) of this year's festival, I was invited along to sit in on Laoise's rehearsal at The Parade Tower before her lunchtime concert titled 'How Happy For The little Birds'. Read on for two videos from Laoise performing works from her lunchtime programme.
read more...
Review: Camerata Kilkenny
Camerata Kilkenny was founded in 1999 by Irish international harpsichordist and organist, Malcolm Proud and Swiss violist Maya Homberger. They have a very strong connection with the festival having given their debut performance here at the 1999 Kilkenny Arts Festival. Since then they have performed all over Europe and Ireland.
The ensemble played a range of works for us by German composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann, two of the great Baroque composers.
The programme was beautiful and exquisitely performed.
read more...
Preview: Friday, August 12
It's hard to believe there's only three days left but that doesn't mean there'll be any let up in the quality and diversity of the acts.
Here's our checklist of everything you need to see today.
read more...
Review: Hanggai
Hanggai arrived in to the Set Theatre as an exotic, unknown quantity to most people. Highly recommended by Music curator Gerry Godley (take a bow!), nothing prepared us for what we witnessed.
By the end of their performance Hanggai left firm friends of every member of the enthusiastic audience. In a packed venue, people stood, sat on the floor and eventually stood up and danced, drawn in and embraced by the sheer spirit of the music. You felt the rush of hooves of their horses and the sheer vastness of their home country in every note. These are a proud people and they expressed this pride in a sincere performance that brought us all in to their world.
read more...
Review: Kevin Barry, Belinda McKeon and Paul Murray
This reading of new works in the Parade Tower was about new Irish writers. And at that, ‘hot’ new Irish writers if you’re into such branding. But by any definition of hot, Kevin Barry, Belinda McKeon and Paul Murray certainly are.
As Cormac Kinsella noted in his introduction, they were indeed ‘all young and all at the beginning of their careers’. It was certainly an inspired choice to programme these writers together because it certainly encouraged a big crowd, all eager to see members of the future literary establishment of Ireland.
Kevin Barry was up first, voicing his delight at being put in a castle. He read from his novel City Of Bohane (that’s pronounced ‘han’ not ‘hane’ he noted). Perhaps taking a leaf from Patrick McCabe’s book, Barry voiced and adopted the movements of his cast of rural oddballs from the fictional town of Bohane, coiling himself around the podium as if it were another character he was interacting with.
Belinda McKeon was next and while certainly not as animated as Kevin Barry, she gave a dryly humorous reading of her debut novel Solace. The book has been generating a lot of hype recently and its easy to see why. Her use of language is fantastic and the interplay between her characters really sparked during her reading. From the perspective of someone who hasn’t read the book, it definitely piqued my interest in grabbing a copy. McKeon read two different extracts from the novel, the last of which focused on the horrors of child birth.
This segued nicely into Paul Murray’s intro when he mentioned that he was going to have a child in 3 weeks time and humourously thanked Belinda for her reading. Skippy Dies has been one of the most talked about Irish novels of recent memory and it’s fair to say that hearing Murray read it was the biggest draw of this event. It’s a fantastic book and it’s one of the best Irish reads I’ve had in a long time. Murray read about Skippy’s attempts to get a date and also the confrontation between him and Karl, the school bully. It was hugely funny, well delivered by its author and created a fantastic sense of the rapport between the boys of Seabrook College. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) his reading went down a bomb.
A short question and answers session followed with the most interesting question revolving around the degree to which the authors act out their characters when they’re writing. Barry admitted entirely acting out all of them. McKeon said she can see them but refrains from acting them out and Paul Murray gave my favourite quote of the night: ‘If you’re not hearing the voices, you’re not getting the characters.’ They also touched on how well the cultural references in their books seem to travel abroad and how they’ve interpreted Ireland in their own books. It was a nice round up to a great event.
I left as most of the audience were making a beeline for the stack of books on sale at the back. Mission accomplished.
John
We're Social