Vanbrugh sustained by RTÉ promise

ARTSCAPE:RTÉ HAS announced that the RTÉ Board has approved a range of measures "aimed at sustaining and supporting chamber music from 2011", writes MICHAEL DERVAN.

The decision came in the wake of a report commissioned last year from arts consultant and composer Philip Hammond. The Hammond Report was seen as a threat to the future of the RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet, which is based in Cork, where RTÉ has supported a quartet-in-residence since 1959.

The good news for the Vanbrughs is that the national broadcaster has proposed a new contract for the quartet, for three years, from 2011-13.

The bad news for the group is that they have not succeeded in reversing the 40 per cent cut in fees that was imposed on their 2010 contract, and that from 2014 their only option for continuing to work for RTÉ will be through a competitive tendering process.

The good news for everyone else is that RTÉ has committed itself to retain its role “as provider and supporter of chamber music”, to continue with the string quartet medium as its “key engagement” with chamber music, and that, over the next three years, it will “seek to restore the levels of funding for chamber music prior to this year” – ie to undo the Vanbrugh cut, but spend the money on other chamber music projects.

The good news for Cork is that RTÉ has also reasserted its commitment to the city as “the continuing base for a chamber music residency”, and that the residency will again be for a string quartet.

The Hammond Report, which will be made available on the RTÉ website, itemised a range of options, from “re-developing and re-invigorating” the residency with the Vanbrughs to starting up again with a new ensemble and a new location, and even to discontinuing what Hammond calls “proactive chamber music provision”.

RTÉ’s chosen option falls into the middle of the range, and the aspiration to restore the station’s overall chamber music support to pre-cutback levels has to be seen in a positive light. It remains to be seen, of course, if this aspiration will be realised in these financially turbulent times.

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TOMMY Tiernan will be back at Toronto's Just for Laughs festival this year after accusations of anti-semitism led to him being dropped from the festival's Canadian tour in 2009, writes SHANE HEGARTY

At last year’s Electric Picnic, the comedian had delivered an off-the-cuff routine about the Holocaust that he had prefaced by saying that comedy was “about allowing whatever lunacy is inside you to come out in a special protected environment where people know that nothing they say is being taken seriously”. But it was taken seriously.

However, Just for Laughs has invited him back for shows in July, and as part of his visit he will Canadian Jewish Congress to discuss the controversy.

On Canadian website jam.canoe.ca, the festival’s chief operating officer Bruce Hills is reported as saying: “We believe in him; we’re not going to desert him. Last fall, he was on a bill with four other artists. When he’s in Toronto this summer, he’ll be by himself. The story broke. We, in fairness . . . I wouldn’t say jumped the gun. But we were very cautious.

“We didn’t want other artists to take the burden if there had been people deciding they wanted to protest outside the theatres or disrupt things. He was not comfortable on behalf of the other artists.”

Hills is quoted as saying that Tiernan is happy to meet the Jewish Congress, and glad to have the chance to clear his name “in person”.

And the CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress described Tiernan as “an edgy guy”, adding that: “We‘ve offered a chat, I would introduce him to some survivors, we’d take him through the Holocaust Education Centre, just so he would get a sense that even in comedy, not everything is okay. And it’s something he did seem to want to get a handle on.”