A festival of kings

Boyle Arts Festival is small, intimate, stylish - and popular - discovers Eileen Battersby.

Eechoes of Stockhausen blend well in a programme including Chopin, Gershwin and a Scott Joplin encore as composer pianist John Gibson charms his audience with a recital that proves as lively as it is diverse. Three portraits of the King family, once the residents of the graceful King House in Boyle, Co Roscommon, overlook the proceedings. As the Boyle Arts Festival Featured Composer, he places his performance and the work he plays within its context. The result is magical, relaxed and intimate, true to the character of this very fine arts festival shaped by its discerning cultural overview.

Daylight fades from the windows framed by long, scarlet drapes. It is a beautiful room in an elegant Georgian residence possessing a long and colourful history. Seated at Roscommon Council Council's Steinway concert piano, Gibson, an affable character who prefaces each piece with conversational and informative asides, creates a relaxed atmosphere.

His playing is expressive and fluid. In performance with soprano Deirdre Moynihan, majestic in her interpretation of two Gibson song settings (one based on German poems, the other on the work of Emily Dickinson) and violinist Richeal Ní Riordain, Gibson performs his own music which ranges from the light and delicate to the dark complexities of his Nijinsky-inspired piano sonata. While his performance of the Chopin Nocturne is magnificent and the highlight of the evening, a selection of five Irish Airs, including Anach Cuan, with Richeal Ní Riordain, is unusually moving.

Earlier in the day, Mary King, a seanchaí from Waterville, Co Kerry, demonstrated the art of storytelling in an inspired setting, the Plunkett Home, a local rest-home. By profession a primary school teacher, King, a youngish woman of as Jane Austen would say, "a pleasant aspect", transforms herself through the power of her voice. She assumes a knowing air of complicity, one minute the local busy body, the next a small boy confessing to wanting to kill his smelly old granny.

"It is all in the details," she later explains, "the little bits of information that build up a story as well as of course, the colloquial phrases." She comes from a great tradition; Kerry people know how to tell a story. "Now, at the time that I'm talking about . . ." and she's off evoking a specific time and place.

It is as if the world is Kerry - which it may well be. Some of the stories she tells are well-known, but a good story-teller can make any story their own, and the other material is her own.

In the company of a traditional music trio, King held court with an assortment of tales including that of the goat who used a red shirt to flag down a train, a salesman intent on eating a newly baked cake, and an elderly boyo who discovers that the new marriage rite is more than he bargained for. Then there's the character who buys a mirror in the chemist and can't stop looking in the glass, convinced it is a picture of his father.

One of the stories is a bilingual account of a sexually reluctant country man, "his hurling medals across his chest", who avoids being seduced by a brazen "City Sue" and lives to regret his caution. Best of all is a yarn beginning with a meditation on "rules and regulations" and she recounts one which specifies "priests in Ireland were not allowed to go to the circus" for fear of them being excited by the lady acrobats.

Another storyteller to appear in Boyle this week was novelist John McGahern, for whom this part of the north-west, and the town itself, is familiar territory. An audience of 250 filled Boyle Protestant church, a fine building on the outskirts of the town, set against a backdrop of fields with long views of the mountains. No matter how often one hears him read, he always manages to take an audience by surprise.

He lopes into view with the demeanour of a man intent on standing at the back of a church service. Thus poised for a quick getaway, he seems the most unlikely of performers, yet this chronicler of the intent contained within the unspoken is a spirited reader with a strong voice and sense of theatre. Reading from several of his works, McGahern concluded with two passages from his latest novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun - an obvious contender for next month's Booker short list.

TONIGHT, the same church, possessing excellent acoustics, is the venue for the National Chamber Choir in concert under its new artistic director, the Cologne-based Brazilian Celso Antunes. It is a superb programme including Brahms - Warum ist das Licht gegeben, Op 74, two Mendelssohn motets, Purcell's Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, Dvorak's Two part songs, Op 29 as well as works by Rachmaninov, Hindemith, Pettrassi and Pärt's Magnificat.

It is the main festival event; if you are not already in Boyle, make your way there now. This is going to be a very special experience. The 17-voice choir was founded in 1991 by Colin Mawby and listeners of Lyric FM will be well aware of its quality. The young violinist Michelle Picardo, accompanied by her sister Sarah, will give a lunchtime recital at King House today.

The role of King House in this year's festival is interesting. "This year we tried to concentrate on smaller events to suit smaller venues," says Boyle Arts festival chairwoman Rhona Feely, the most low-key, down-to-earth arts administrator I have yet encountered. "We wanted to make particular use of King House. This policy has been very successful in creating more intimate performances." Cauldron of the Brontës, a taut drama played in the round, in which the three novelist sisters consider their respective artistic struggles in the face of their brother's Branwell's disintegration, worked brilliantly.

Well-established as a heritage centre, King House will become a major arts venue. The festival's main exhibition, Artists From Ulster, is also on display there. It is an effective space and the exhibition, which has already been viewed in Boyle by 2,500 people, is of very high quality and includes Basil Blackshaw, Neil Shawcross, Cherith McKinstry, Brian Ballard, Sophie Aghajanian, Orla Egan and others. The Boyle Civic collection already includes more than 100 paintings and sculpture. Proceedings from the sales of the Ulster exhibition work will go towards securing more works for the town's collection - several Ulster pieces have already been purchased by the civic collection.

The attitude towards the arts in Boyle is not only informed, it is welcoming, unpretentious and untrendy. Boyle itself is a pleasant town, one of Ireland's friendlier places. It also has a very interesting history of contrasts, well represented by two major structures, the great Cistercian Abbey and King House, both having served their time as military barracks.

In keeping with its sense of history and the cultural overview that shapes Boyle and its festival, German art historian Britta Kalkreuter, author of Boyle Abbey - and the School of the West, explored the abbey's architecture and history. The 400-year-old role of culm as a domestic fuel in Ireland and its part in Ireland's social history was the subject of Michael Conry's lecture. According to Rhona Feely, the festival attendance is "about 30 per cent local and 70 per cent from across the north-west and beyond. We're pleased."

During its 13 years, the Boyle Arts Festival has had several triumphs and tonight's concert should stand equal to Fiona Shaw's Hamlet staged some years ago in Boyle Abbey. Arts is about performance, heritage, entertainment and ordinary life, Feely and her colleagues know this - that's why they organise an event that succeeds and satisfies.

The Boyle Arts Festival continues today with the National Chamber Choir. Details from 079-63085 and www.boylearts.com