Paris's Irish choir to make 'home' debut

ARTSCAPE:THERE WILL BE a landmark moment for the Irish Chamber Choir of Paris this month when it performs in Ireland for the first time, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAIC. Under the aegis of the Irish Cultural Centre, the choir was assembled in 2004 by musical director Jean-Charles Léon, a musicologist and teacher at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, with more than 20 years of experience as a choirmaster. Buoyed by a performance at the Irish Embassy in Paris last week, the 16 female singers (mostly French, with a representative each from Ireland and the US) will perform three concerts in Dublin, Maynooth and Galway.

For the Irish Cultural Centre, the tour is something of a departure. Every year the choir presents a programme of concerts at the centre and at French venues and festivals, but this will be its first visit to Ireland. And although Michel Abécassis's adaptation of Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doorsand Paula Spencer(featuring Franco-Irish actor Olwen Fouéré) was "brought home" for a week-long run at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin last year, the centre's director, Sheila Pratschke, says "this will be the first time apart from that that we have brought something from Paris back to Ireland. It should be somewhat of a two-way traffic. I'm looking forward to it immensely. I look forward to seeing how they react and what they think of Ireland. It's a strange time, I suppose, to visit Ireland, but hopefully the weather will be beautiful at the end of April."

The choir will perform at the Dublin Unitarian Church, St Stephen’s Green, at 8pm on Thursday, April 22nd (admission free) and in a lunchtime concert at Maynooth on April 23rd as part of the university’s foundation day celebrations. The final performance will take place in Galway, with local chamber choir Cois Cladaigh, on April 24th.

See centreculturelirlandais.com or, for tickets, e-mail Sheila Pratschke at spratschke@centreculturelirlandais.com.

Midsummer blur

As the Cork Midsummer Festival announces highlights of this year's programme, its multi-disciplinary approach reflects a canny determination to connect the local to the global, in both content and method, writes PETER CRAWLEY. Leading the charge is the festival's first international co-production, the charmingly titled FML (Fuck My Life), which will have spent 18 months in development by Belgian stage director Pol Heyvaert and 15 Cork teenagers. A collective undertaking between the Midsummer festival, the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's and London's Lift (London International Festival of Theatre), even the production's title will be understood across geographical boundaries, referring as it does to "an international youth thing which is big in Ireland as well", according to Midsummer artistic director William Galinsky. "Although the experience of a 17-year-old in Cork city can be very specific, a lot of it is universal too," he says.

There is something similar about Corcadorca’s contribution to the festival this year, a staging of Russian playwright Vassily Sigarev’s Plasticine in the Savoy nightclub. A brutal story about childhood in the new Russia, it earns Galinsky’s approval for its accidental timeliness and prescience for Ireland in the recession.

Recession or not, expense has not been spared in bringing controversial choreographer Jérôme Bel back to Ireland for his first visit to Cork with a revival of The Show Must Go On, a production that blurs the line between spectator and spectacle. German company Rimini Protokoll follow suit with the interactive Best Before, allowing audience members to interact with performers via joypads and their own avatar. One question posed by this year's festival is: who represents the audience and who is the artist?

“Those things are blurring,” says Galinsky. “We’re seeing a theatre and performance culture completely redefining itself in reaction to the ever-changing present.”

The festival also makes its first foray into contemporary music with minimalist composer and pianist Philip Glass performing with cellist Wendy Sutter and percussionist Mick Rossi in An Evening of Chamber Music.

Irish work will not be overshadowed, but the festival's local contributions, some reliant on favourable grant decisions by the Arts Council, will not be confirmed until later. The festival will be showcasing Irish works in development, however, while Irish TimesTheatre Award nominee Hammergrin has been made its first associate artist company, with two new pieces in development for 2011 and 2012.

Does international work and collaboration dilute the identity of the festival though? “Identity is forever shaping itself and in some ways an arts festival asks that question,” Galinsky says.

Tickets for the June festival go on sale at corkmidsummer.com from Monday.

Blas bursaries offered

The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick (UL), home to the Blas International Summer School of Irish Traditional Music and Dance, has announced the launch of the Paul Brady Blas Scholarship. This will provide €20,000 in funds over three years, providing 25 places for deserving musicians at the Blas summer school, where they will benefit from masterclasses and tuition from some of Ireland’s most respected traditional musicians and dancers, including Dónal Lunny, Martin Hayes, John Carty, Colin Dunne, Micheál Ó Súlleabháin, Siobhán Peoples, Danú’s Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh and many others.

This year, the Blas Summer School runs from June 23rd to July 2nd, and Paul Brady celebrated the launch of the scholarship with an intimate concert at UL’s Chancellor’s Concert on March 24th last. Brady’s hope is that “the Paul Brady Blas Scholarships will allow students who wouldn’t otherwise get the opportunity, to experience the Blas Summer School and to access the expertise of some of our finest traditional musicians, singers and dancers.”

Bursaries of this kind are thin on the ground in the traditional arts, and as the public arts purse strings are tightening by the day, it’s likely that competition will be fierce.

Applications in writing should be made to Ernestine Healy, Director, Blas International Summer School of Irish Traditional Music and Dance, Irish World Academy, University of Limerick, or e-mail ernestine.healy@ul.ie.

Applicants should be aged over 17 and should include a sample recording of their music and/or dance. See blas.ie for further information.

** Popular children's writer Eoin Colfer has now turned his hand to a stage musical. The Wexford author of the Artemis Fowl series and the Hitchhiker's Guidesequel has written the "book" for The Lords of Love, which will have itsworld premiere at the Jerome Hynes Theatre in Wexford Opera House on May 25th, followed by a three-night run.

With a plot that offers the opportunity for general mayhem, The Lords of Loveconcerns two ageing Irish crooners who were almost famous in the 1960s and 1970s, with such hits as My Love for You is Greenand The Karate Chop. Now, years later, they are reunited for a concert with the woman who split them up – but harmony is not part of the evening.

Colfer’s musical collaborators are composers Liam Bates and Cyril Murphy, whose tunes span a range of styles, from swing to blues, showband and disco. Tickets are available from wexfordoperahouse.ie or 053-9122144.