A chance to stick your head in a pig

ArtScape: This week's ritzy launch of the ESB Dublin Fringe Festival at the new Market Bar was a coming together of Irish independent artists and organisations, who make up an even bigger Fringe than last year.

Director Vallejo Gantner describes this year's programme as innovative, edgy and risky, "to inspire and challenge the very definition of art and performance". Indeed, there's a dizzying array of work on offer, not just theatre, but a really interesting line-up of Irish and international music, visual art, dance, film, installations - more than 140 different productions, and about 25,000 more tickets on sale than last year. Don't know how Gantner manages to keep track of it all, but the audience will certainly have a lot to select from. There's no one unifying theme but a lot of the work focuses on issues of diaspora - both the Irish diaspora, and those of other nationalities coming here, creating a multi-cultural Ireland. So this year you can stick your head in a pig, watch Macbeth performed by dolls through binoculars, enter the head of a woman while she cybersurfs, watch 10 naked Brazilians, or sip wine in the tent where Marlene Dietrich sang Falling in Love Again.

The Fringe has been put together via a patchwork quilt that must be an organisational feat in itself. There's the graft and commitment from the Fringe team and the many people in the organisations presenting work, as well as the continued title sponsorship from the ESB (their contract is still running, even in the face of changing sponsorship policies there that are unfortunate for the arts). Then there are arrangements for specific productions with international bodies such as the British Council (working on the Asian Dub Foundation's new La Haine soundtrack for the exciting opening night), the Australia Council of the Arts, Arts Victoria, the Singapore Arts Council, the Dublin Docklands Development Authority the French, Australian, Israeli embassies, Alliance Française, Noreast Beers. Dublin City Council was enormously helpful, especially with sorting permission for the unusual spaces used this year. Gantner specifically thanked the Arts Council for its support for the Fringe, as "an indication of its continued interest in the independent sector"; he welcomed the new council, facing an unenviable job.

These are straitened times, and yet the response to economic crisis has been strong, a reaction with what Ganter calls "vigour and ever-increasing ambition" without apology or compromise. The Dublin Theatre Festival programme is strong and healthy - and the two combined look like making for an exciting few weeks in Dublin this autumn. Things obviously can't get even harder for the arts indefinitely without quality and morale dropping, but at the moment at least the attitude seems bullish and in-your-face.

The team is also hoping for more of a presence of the Fringe on the street, to impact on the city, and to this end the Spiegeltent, pitched at the park near the Jervis Centre, the car park performances, and the shipping containers which will house the visual arts Sited shows - on O'Connell Street, Parnell Square, Dublin Castle, IMMA, the docklands - should make a statement to the wider city.

There are far too many promising shows to mention just a few, but check out the website at www.fringefest.com or drop into the box office in the middle of Temple Bar; the Fringe's temporary home is at the former DesignYard at 12 East Essex Street, 11-6 p.m., Monday to Saturday (1850-374643).

Fun lovin' Dublin

Dublin is hipper than New York, according to Huey Morgan, frontman of the Fun Lovin' Criminals. The Crims have found themselves a home from home here, investing in bars and a pizza restaurant as financial safety nets for the day they get too old to rock and roll. Speaking from his suite in the Morrison Hotel, Morgan told the Guardian: "In many ways Dublin is like New York used to be - you can exercise your personal freedom. New York's just getting fucked up, it's way too straitlaced."

Names on the Network

Music Network's autumn season shows an impressive span of styles, including the splendid (and splendidly named) clarinettists Ronald Van Spaendonck and Gabriele Mirabassi. Van Spaendonck returns to Ireland with his long-time collaborator, French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, and Mirabasssi's jazz trio is said to dissolve the boundaries between jazz, ethnic and classical music. Also featured in the tours are percussion quartet 4-mality, fronted by Adrian Spillett (the only percussionist so far to have claimed the prestigious BBC Young Musician of the Year title) and British pianist Paul Lewis. The tours begin with Van Spaendonck in Drogheda on October 3rd and continues with the various artists until December 6th, taking in venues from Dublin to Armagh. Music Network: 01-6719429; tickets: Opus II, 24 Sth Georges Street, Dublin 2 (01-6778571).

Early music madness

Ace American viol player Sarah Cunningham, who settled in Cork in 1999, is the artistic director of the new East Cork Early Music Festival, which opens next Friday, writes Michael Dervan. The festival is very much a showcase of the cream of Irish-based talent in the early music field, featuring harpsichordist Malcolm Proud, tenor John Elwes, harpist Siobhán Armstrong (in a programme using a copy of the wire-strung Ballymaloe harp), violinist Maya Homburger, double bassist Barry Guy, the choir Madrigal '75 and the ensembles The Little Consort and Camerata Kilkenny. The opening programme, at the Stephen Pearce Gallery in Shanagarry, is called Learning to Walk and brings together dancer Tara Brandel and two violists (Cunningham herself and Sarah Groser) for performances that will range from 17th-century dances up to free improvisation. Improvisation also features on Sunday 7th, when Homburger and Guy team up with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and dancer Lotta Melin. Festival recitals also take place in Fota House, St Mary's Collegiate Church, Youghal, Cloyne Cathedral, Ballymaloe House and the Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh. Details on the festival, running until Sunday, September 14th: 021-485 5379 or www.tinyurl.com/lggr

And furthermore . . .

Cadmus, a community music project, hosts a seminar at the National College of Ireland next Thursday (September 4th) to identify and explore issues affecting music in the community through case studies, discussions and workshops demonstrating innovative methods and good practice in working with older people. Aimed at musicians who wish to work with older people or who have done so, the seminar is in partnership with Create and Age and Opportunity, and is chaired by Orla Moloney from Age and Opportunity. Cadmus, funded by Dublin City Council Arts Office and the Arts Council, aims to profile music as an art-form in community contexts and support the development of community music practice. Information from Cadmus coordinator John Lalor at cadmus@dubc.iol.ie . . . "Unique in the annals of history", "the most vital and distinguished exhibition of work by Irish artists that has ever been held", or maybe an exhibition of "artists who have ideas minus the capacity to express them"? The autumn edition of the Irish Arts Review looks at the legacy of the 1943 Irish Exhibition of Living Art (this year is its 60th anniversary) which included works by Louis le Brocquy, Mainie Jellett, Sean Keating and Norah McGuinness . . . Well, they're in a different revival category to the dinosaur Rolling Stones (thankfully), but tickets for The Stunning's resurrective tour are apparently selling well and the band that their (many) fans never forgot have added a warm-up gig on Sunday 7th at Garavogue in Sligo. The Galway show at the Radisson on 26th has sold out (not surprising given their local fanbase) and they've added a gig on the previous night, as well as an extra Vicar Street date on 14th. See Ticketmaster and local outlets . . . Defining the identity of the Cork Opera House as an "audience-led" theatre, executive director Gerry Barnes introduced his autumn-winter season on Monday with the announcement of repeat shows, such as the Buddy Holly story in a West End production of Buddy (from September 16th) and the Chris Moreno presentation of Annie, writes Mary Leland. These audience-winners are supported by a hefty dose of Ellen Kent operas, from Madame Butterfly and Rigoletto (October) to Tosca and Turandot (March 2004), by a Carl Rosa offering of HMS Pinafore (November 11th) and by plays such as Stones in His Pockets, Sharon's Grave, The Playboy of the Western World with Yew Tree Theatre, and Mrs Brown Rides Again. Dance includes Siamsa Tire with Oileán, a Cork City Ballet Spectacular in 2004, and the Perm State Ballet with The Sleeping Beauty on December 1st and 2nd next, and the concert programme begins with the Harlem Gospel Choir on Sunday September 28th and Susana Baca on October 23rd. The crowded season at the Half Moon Theatre features concerts, cabaret and comedy, while the Opera House also hosts Cork's two major festivals, with the Film Festival opening on October 12th and the Jazz Festival later the same month . . . The 12th Annual Appalachian and Bluegrass Music Festival expects 8,000 people at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh next weekend (5th-7th) for an American line-up including Laurie Lewis, O' Sister!, The Sullivans, Ira Bernstein and Smith & Jones. The Branchettes, from North Carolina, add an African-American Gospel element and others include Northern Exposure, the Niall Toner Band, the Rosinators, Knotty Pine and Julie Henigan. Bluegrass hotline 028-82256330 for tickets or brochure.