"An honour but also a faintly horrifying prospect", is how the Clare-born, Dublin-based composer, Gerald Barry, describes the prospect of a week-long festival of his compositions. The event will be held in Dublin in June, with concerts and related events running from Wednesday 21st to Sunday 25th.
The festival, says Seamus Crimmins, head of Lyric FM, "will celebrate the imagination and passion of a great Irish creative talent". It is the first occasion RTE has honoured an Irish composer in this way, and also the first major concentration by RTE on the work of Barry, who has never had an orchestral work commissioned by RTE.
The festival will cover the entire range of Barry's output, both in scale and period. In the opening concert, the NSO, under Robert Houlihan, will play two orchestral works from the late 1990s, The Road and The Conquest of Ireland.
The final concert, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, marks the Irish debut of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, in association with the British Council. BCMG will be conducted by Rumon Gamba in a programme to include the Irish premiere of Wiener Blut, plus Bob and pieces by Thomas Ades, Pierre Boulez, Debussy and Ravel.
The Japanese pianist and Barry expert, Noriko Kawai, will be heavily featured, both in a solo recital (at the Hugh Lane Gallery on June 25th) and in two piano music pieces with Pavel Nersessian (at the National Gallery on June 23rd).
The Friday concert will also include the new 1998 for violin and piano and Things that gain by being painted from 1977, the earliest of his works that Barry now allows to be performed. This sharply witty setting of extracts from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon will be performed by US soprano Beth Griffiths, who gave the premiere in Dublin in 1978.
Also in the festival schedule are performances of choral works by the National Chamber Choir under Simon Joly (National Gallery, June 22nd), and three performances of the early theatre piece, Three Fairy Tales (staged by Natasha Lohan at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD, June 24th); the last of these will be followed by a symposium and open forum with the composer.
For further details of the Gerald Barry Festival contact Lyric FM, 061-207300
There are some strange juxtapositions in the schedule for the "Island: Arts from Ireland" festival of Irish arts to be held in Washington D.C. in May. There is an item on a symposium to be moderated by Fintan O'Toole entitled "An Unpredictable Past: Theater and History in Contemporary Ireland". Another event is a concert by the National Symphony Orchestra Pops in which, "old favourites such as Danny Boy will join symphonic selections from and inspired by the Emerald Isle".
Given the contradictions and contrasts of today's Ireland, it could be argued that the festival programme gives the impression that Irish culture is more homogenous than it is. Paintings from the collection of Brian F. Burns are described as being "evocative of the beautiful and tempestuous spirit of the Irish land and people".
The line-up for the festival is heavily weighted towards established art, with elder statesmen and women strongly represented. It is a pity that a greater number of younger, newer talents couldn't have been included - but then again, some might not have looked very well in a programme of "Theater, Music, Film and Literature from the Emerald Isle".
There is, however, much of interest on the programme. Among the highlights are a section of the Book of Kells, on loan from Trinity College, Dublin, and a major exhibition of paintings by Tony O'Malley. Rough Magic Theatre Company presents Pentecost by Stewart Parker; Druid and the Royal Court are taking Marina Carr's new play, On Raftery's Hill; Donal O'Kelly with Red Kettle will present his superb one-man show, Catalpa. Druid's artistic director Garry Hynes will present a symposium with the playwright, Martin McDonagh, on the importance of collaboration in the theatre.
There will be a showcase of contemporary Irish film curated by Sheila Patschke, director of the Film Institute of Ireland. The Irish Chamber Orchestra will perform a new work by Bill Riverdance Whelan, and composer Jane O'Leary has written a new piece for the pianist Barry Douglas and Camerata Ireland. E, presents a seminar on Irish song, on which he is an expert.
In addition, there will be a range of educational initiatives, many of them conducted through the Internet, such as two storytelling projects and a series of virtual exhibitions.
The festival runs from May 13th to 28th and is funded by government sources from north and south of the border, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Delta Air Lines and Pfizer Inc, as well as a range of other sponsors.
http://kennedy-center.org/irishfestival
They left the theatre after the show, packed into a mini-bus, drove for 10 hours and came to the beach. The waves were high and there were sharks. They drove back and went on stage. Don't worry, this was only one of the highlights of the combined assault made by Ridiculusmus, Bedrock and Pan Pan on Adelaide, Australia. Against stiff competition in what is probably the second biggest Fringe in the world, they won a joint Fringe First award for their productions of Bernard-Marie Koltes's Night Before the Forest (Bedrock), Standoffish (Pan Pan), and The Exhibitionists (Ridiculusmus, which is Belfast-based).
It is interesting to see Ireland represented by such visual/ physical theatre. Bedrock's Jimmy Fay goes so far as to say that many of the shows "deconstructed text - it was a bit like watching the director dream, which is about as interesting as listening to someone dream". He came back with a burning desire to do a series of playlets under the title Roulette by Melbourne-based Raimondo Cortese, including one "about a mechanic and a driver and the driver's just run over a kangaroo". Can't wait.
The deadline for applications for the post of festival director at the Belfast Festival closes today. Queen's University wasn't prepared to hazard any guesses about when the new director might be appointed, but the Festival's acting director, Rosie Turner, said she thought it would be April or May. Meanwhile, she says, she is "progressing" the programme for the October-November festival and the new director - "if it's not me" - would mainly focus on next year's festival.
frontrow@irish-times.com
