Young musicians must seize the day

ArtScape:  It's crunch time at the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland (NYOI), writes Michael Dervan. The orchestra was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons earlier this year, when its board amalgamated its two largest orchestras into one.

The outcry about the decision was long and loud. The board has since signalled its intention to reinstate the two orchestras if sufficient players of the required standard present themselves for auditions this year.

The closing date for applications is Monday, September 24th, and, clearly, getting sufficient applications is a prerequisite for getting sufficient players.

Looked at another way, it is also crunch time for all those young musicians, parents, teachers and administrators who added their voices to the clamour against the board's decision. After all, it is they who will ultimately determine whether the numbers will add up to make it possible to have the two orchestras back.

The planned January concerts by the National Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (made up of 18- to 24-year-olds) will be conducted by Matthias Bamert. The programme will include Richard Strauss's mammoth Alpine Symphony, as well as Sibelius's Violin Concerto, with the young Scottish star, Nicola Benedetti. The course dates are December 29th to January 5th, with concerts in Limerick on Friday, January 4th and Dublin on Saturday, January 5th. Looking further ahead, the orchestra has plans to tour to Switzerland next summer to take part in the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Bern Symphony Orchestra.

The course for the 12- to 17-year-olds of the NYOI starts on December 27th, and their concert, on January 1st, will be given under their regular conductor, Gearóid Grant.

Zoë Keers, the orchestra's newly appointed general manager, says: "This is an opportunity for everyone who cares about young people and music in Ireland to make sure that our two national youth orchestras are restored to their former glory. Here at the NYOI we're determined to make that happen once we can get the players we need. And we've also commissioned an independent strategic review that will guide us going forward."

The Dr Who of festivals

You have to hand it to the Belfast Festival at Queen's (BFQ) - it steadfastly refuses to be written off, writes Jane Coyle. And why shouldn't it resist being sidelined? It was, after all, a beacon of light during the dark years in the North, when it was the devil's own job to persuade international performers to appear in the city. More recently, events such as the Cathedral Quarter Festival, the West Belfast Féile and the Open House Festival have deservedly grabbed the imagination, the audiences and the limelight, but, 45 years on, the BFQ remains the big one.

"The Belfast Festival didn't get to be 45 years old in this town without being a tough cookie," says director Graeme Farrow. "It has had to reinvent itself occasionally and has gone through a number of Dr Who-like reincarnations."

Last year's event may have broken box-office records, but the overall financial situation had reached a point where Queen's University effectively withdrew its continuing support unless other major backers weighed in. To the rescue came the NI Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, with a one-off injection of £150,000 (€219,000) to keep the ship afloat in 2007.

"We have bounced back this year," says Farrow. "That fact is evidenced in really phenomenal ticket sales, which have already reached £200,000 (€292,000). A few years ago, that would have been our total box-office takings. The future is still not financially secure, but I am feeling more optimistic and excited about what lies ahead than I have been in the eight years I have worked at the festival."

It has been acknowledged that, in spite of being so strapped for cash, the BFQ lags far behind others in the UK and Ireland in terms of public funding, so Farrow and his team have put together a lean programme of quality events. He is particularly relishing the prospect of Replay's new, site-specific Macbeth in Crumlin Road Gaol; Truth in Translation, a powerful piece of musical theatre based on official translations from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and Bach's Mass in B Minor, "composed by a German Protestant and performed in Clonard Monastery on the Falls Road".

Farrow believes that with a new political climate and a significant increase in tourism in the North, prospects for the festival have never been better. "I honestly feel that the Belfast of today is the most exciting place in Europe in which to programme work," he says. "Our political and social history gives Belfast an edge that other cities do not have. I welcome the arrival of other festivals and the rise in live-event programming all through the year, as it creates a culture for going out. When it comes to the festival, the public expects us to provide the rare, the exotic and the exclusive - and rightly so. The challenge now is to rebuild faith and trust and keep producing events that are really special, that have the wow factor."

• The 2007 festival runs from October 19th to November 4th. For details, see www.belfastfestival.com.

Tricycle hit for Fishamble

Fishamble's production of Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street, just opened at the Tricycle in London, has had very good reviews in the British newspapers. The Guardian wrote: "'Given that Barry writes in a honeyed prose spiked with a wormwood humour, and the monologues are performed with exquisite restraint by Mary Murray and Karl Shiels, there is hardly a dry eye in the house by the end." According to the Evening Standard, it was "wrenchingly heartfelt" and a "remarkable turn from Murray, reinforced by commendably unfussy direction from Jim Culleton", while the Times's five-star review said it was "exquisitely phrased" with an "intensely powerful conclusion" and "superb acting from Murray and Shiels".

Fishamble is bringing the production to the Dublin Theatre Festival and has also launched an award for the best play by a new or emerging Irish (or Irish-based) playwright premiered on the Dublin Fringe. The prize includes €1,000 towards the playwright's next play.

Meanwhile, Culleton, Fishamble's artistic director, is directing a new production of Monged, by Gary Duggan, at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre in November, for the reopening season of the theatre after three years of rebuilding work, with Irish actors Darren Healy and Barry Ward in the cast. The 2005 Stewart Parker Trust Award-winning play is also being developed as a screenplay.

And Fishamble's general manager, Orla Flanagan, has been awarded a Fulbright scholarship to spend a year at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC.

The Dublin Fringe Festival is in full swing and its chairwoman, Una Carmody, clearly has her hands full, as the Helix in DCU, where she is chief executive, has just launched its new season.

The three-venue centre finally has some good news on audience figures, with numbers up to almost 100,000 people so far this year, and another 100,000 projected between now and Christmas. The fact that 90 per cent of them come from outside the local Dublin 9 area seems to be an indication that the Helix's reach is expanding. Three venues (Mahony Hall, the Space and the theatre) means a lot of seats to fill, 1,734 in fact. For this year, 247 nights have been programmed, with 500 performances throughout the year. From September 2006 to August 2007, the Helix operated at 79.2 per cent of capacity (including Charity You're a Star), with 93 sell-out performances. This is aincrease in occupancy from 52 per cent in 2003-04.

The programme has to please a huge range of people. Theatre events include a co-production of Alice in Wonderland with Landmark Productions, Philadelphia Here I Come!, by Brian Friel, from Second Age, and TV-spin-off Grumpy Old Women - Live. Opera includes Handel's Orlando from Opera Theatre Company and a visit from Russia's Rostov State Opera. Again, in an attempt to be all things to all people, the head-spinning music programme includes RTÉ Concert Orchestra Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra evenings, a concert version of Carmen, an Elton John night, the Double Helix Jazz Series with Jan Garbarek and Thimar, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Eleanor McEvoy, Legends of Irish Folk, a showbands tribute and Gerry Marsden of Pacemakers fame. For details, see www.thehelix.ie.

Nuala O'Faolain, John Waters and Leanne O'Sullivan are among the guests at this years Éigse Michael Hartnett, which opens on Thursday in Newcastle West, Co Limerick. "Éigse" means a gathering of poets and writers, and the event includes Limerick poet Catherine Phil McCarthy, 2007 Hartnett award-winner Maurice Riordan, poet and writer John W Sexton, writer Christine Dwyer Hickey and biographer Penny Perrick. For details, call 061-496498/496300 or see www.lcc.ie.