Lots to choose from….
| This month’s arts roundup features SBS’s celebration on Irish cinema, recent Irish casting news, Folk Festivals and other dates for your diary. We also feature a save the date for an African and Irish music concert on Saturday 6th May. |
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| SBS On Demand have put together a catalogue of Irish Films and TV that they promoted for St Patrick’s Day. Many of these movies and tv shows are still available to watch, including some Irish Film Festival favourites; ‘The Guard‘ from the 2023 Outdoor Irish Film Festival, ‘Calm with Horses‘ from the 2020 Irish Film Festival, and ‘Redemption of a Rogue‘ and ‘An Cailín Ciúin‘ from the 2022 Irish Film Festival. |
| Irish Casting News |
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| Hot off their Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actorrespectively, Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan are set to star in the Hollywood blockbuster that is Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’ sequel. Speaking to Deadline, Ridley Scott said: “We have a good footprint, a good, logical place to go. You can’t just do another Gladiator type movie. There’s enough components from the first one to pick up the ball and continue it.”Gladiator 2 is currently set to arrive in cinemas on Friday, November 22nd, 2024. Read more here. |
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| ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan is a book-to-film adaptation that is being produced by and stars Cillian Murphy; “I’m honoured and thrilled to have the opportunity to bring Claire Keegan’s magnificent novel to the screen”. Murphy will star alongside Ciaran Hinds and Emily Watson in this tale about a coal merchant, Billy Furlong in a small Irish town in 1985. A discovery before Christmas reveals secrets about his past, home, and current life. Claire Keegan’s literary work has been adapted to screen before with her novella ‘Foster’ being the inspiration for BAFTA and Oscar nominated film ‘An Cailín Ciúin’. Small Things Like These is expected to arrive in cinemas in 2024. Read more here. |
| Afro-Irish Music Project (Save the Date!) |
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| The Irish Film Festival have teamed up with the Irish National Association and the Africultures Festival to present a music event which mixes Irish music with Ghanaian music and dancing. The gig will happen on May 6th at the Gaelic Club and brings together Irish and African musicians who will perform both solo and also on new material which they have devised together. The Irish musicians are Ros Donovan (fiddle, guitar, vocals), Oli Cechini (uileann pipes), Cam Samy (accordion, vocals), Carissa Lee (guitar), João Almeida (flute, pipes). The Ghanaian musicians are Karifi, an 8 piece ensemble who feature singing, chanting and drumming. The project also features a video and website which explore the experience of migration to Australia. |
| National Folk Festival |
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| Over the Easter weekend (6-10 April) the National Folk Festival will be taking place at the EPIC Exhibition Park in Canberra. This year celebrates 31 years of the festival that showcases the Australian folk (including traditional Celtic) culture through music, dance and storytelling.Enjoy over 100+ acts which include award-winning artists, exclusive concerts, emerging artists, and celebrating some of our greatest musicians. Irish musicians and dancers include Austral, Luke Plumb Band, Sydney Ceili Dancers and Melbourne Comhaltas.In addition to that, there will be food, a bar, a session bar, market stalls, a circus, orchestras, workshops, comedy, spoken word, etc. and the folkies would also get a chance to engage themselves with some art, craft, and dancing.https://www.folkfestival.org.au/ |
| St Albans Folk Festival |
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| The St Albans Fold Festival will be taking place on the 21st – 23rd of April in the country town of St Albans (approx. 2h drive north of Sydney).All venues are a leisurely stroll from the campsite and the heart of the festival, and the village of St Albans in the Macdonald Valley has the historic Settler’s Arms pub and the Pickled Wombat cafe. We host a range of market stalls that offer food, clothes, instruments etc.Traditional Celtic Musicians include Eimíle Brí, Kejafi and The Full Irish.https://stalbansfolkfestival.com.au/ |
| Áine Tyrrell Music News |
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| What started as a joke after losing merch and new vinyl in the floods is now a reality. ‘Return to the Sea, Flood Edition’ was created with the help of Kate Stroud with Áine and Kate going through the damaged vinyl, polishing off the least damaged units, saving and packing them up. 140 units were made and over half have already sold online. If you’d like a copy they are available for ‘pay what you can’ and each is marked with their individual number. Buy the vinyl here: https://www.ainetyrrell.com/product/835202 |
| Now’s your chance to see Áine Tyrrell live! Áine is going to tour in April, May and June. The first show is on Friday the 21st of April in Glebe. You can check out more more information and dates here. |
| High praise for Lankum’s new album |
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| The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Month goes to the new release by Lankum and consolidates the Dublin band as the leading folk combo in the country today. Combining vocal harmonies with hurdy gurdies and uileann pipes the new album proves, once again, that Lankum are the new future of Irish folk. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/17/lankum-false-lankum-review-folk-rough-trade |
| More Events For Your Diary |
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| 18 April 2023 A Seminar The Melbourne Irish Studies Seminar Series |
| Dianne Hall and Loretta Dynan Going home: Australians in Ireland 1850-19254.30pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time 18th April 2023. In person and on zoom Many Irish who settled in Australia wrote about their desire to go ‘home’, if not permanently then at least to visit and see familiar people and places. However only a small number of the estimated 400,000 Irish who settled in Australia between 1788 and the 1920s actually did undertake the long and expensive voyage back. Using the Irish census returns for 1901 and 1911, we will showcase some of the Australians and their families who were living in Ireland in the first decades of the twentieth century. Census data however does not include those Irish Australians who returned to Ireland for visits at other times. Newspaper and family archives show that the dream of return to Ireland was achieved by a few Irish settlers and their families. Prof. Dianne Hall (Victoria University, Melbourne) is co-author of A New History of the Irish in Australia, 2018 (with Elizabeth Malcolm) and Imperial Spaces: Placing the Irish and Scots in colonial Australia, 2011, (with Lindsay Proudfoot). Loretta Dynan (Victoria University, Melbourne) is a PhD candidate working on family history and memory in Irish farming families in Victoria. As always this is a free public seminar open to every one. This is a hybrid event.In person, Jabiru Room, Academic Centre at Newman College, Swanston St, Carlton.To join on zoom Join Zoom Meeting https://victoriauniversity.zoom.us/j/87290118340?pwd=eGNUendrckpsanhWcXlmZjJXNGxPdz09Meeting ID: 872 9011 8340 Passcode: 424034 MISS co-convenors: Philip Bull (La Trobe University) Frances Devlin-Glass (Deakin University) Dianne Hall (Victoria University) Ronan McDonald, (University of Melbourne)Elizabeth Malcolm (University of Melbourne) |
| Our website is https://isaanz.org/irish-studies-association-of-australia-and-new-zealand/events/miss-seminars/ |
A One-Day Conference
ISAANZ Event https://isaanz.org/2023/03/09/lament-celebrating-an-irish-tradition/
Lament: A One-Day Celebration of the Tradition of Irish Keen (Hybrid)
Wednesday 3rd May, 2023 starting at 10:00am (London), 7:00pm (Melbourne and Eastern Standard Time)
A one-day hybrid event featuring poetry, music, performance and new research on the 250th Anniversary of the poem ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, presented by The Cambridge Group for Irish Studies
The Irish Caoin or Keen was a vocal ritual performed at a wake or graveside. Highly stylised and yet capable of being intensely personal, it recognised the life of the deceased whilst also honouring grief of their loss. Performed (traditionally in Irish) by a group of women made up of professional ‘keeners’ and the female bereaved, its unique sound featured spontaneous utterance, repeated motifs, crying and elements of song. It has been described as ‘A very melancholy chant, rhythmic … Almost a spontaneous choir…’, and as ‘extremely beautiful’.
As a synthesis of the personal and public; as an expression of female artistic performance; and as an example of the crux of improvised and conventional art, the Caoin/Keen/Lament tradition is a site of wide-ranging interest for scholars, poets, musicians and other performers. Although the practice of keening at wakes and funerals died out in Ireland in the early twentieth century, it remains current in a number of poems, including ‘Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire’ / ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’. Our ‘Lament’ Event will feature several approaches to understanding the power, forms and legacy of the Caoin/ Keen tradition, and its translation into English, focusing on the example of Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s famous poem. It’s unusual for a poem to have an exact date of composition. In the case of ‘Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire’ / ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, we know this date to have been May 4th, 1773, the date of her husband’s murder and her subsequent lament, intoned over his dead body. Our one-day event at Cambridge University will mark the 250th anniversary of the poem famously described by Peter Levi in his Oxford Lectures as ‘the greatest poem written in these islands in the whole eighteenth century’.
Over the twentieth century, many writers (including Seamus Heaney, Frank O’Connor, Doireann Ní Ghriofa, and Eílís Dillon) have translated some or all of this poem. Has any Irish or eighteenth-century poem enjoyed so many afterlives? This celebration, featuring both scholars and poets, will attempt to answer the questions, ‘What is the enduring appeal of this poem?, and ‘Why does it remain such a vivid and powerful presence on the contemporary poetry landscape?’
The event will have two strands: in the morning, papers on Lament, its context, history and tradition will be presented by a range of respected Irish scholars (see Programme), with ample time for discussion, questions and audience participation. The afternoon sessions will feature a poetry reading by Irish poets Martina Evans, Fran Lock and Mícheál McCann, who will consider the lasting impact of ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, and the theme of the public performance of mourning and grief. Poets Paul Muldoon and Vona Groarke will then discuss their translations of ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’. The day will close with a premiere performance of an extract of Irene Buckley’s opera, ‘Lament for Art O’Leary’, conducted by the composer, along with other settings of extracts of the poem composed by students of Cambridge University.
‘Lament’ is both an in-person and online event. FREE to attend, but advance Registration is essential.
SPEAKERS
Angela Bourke, Professor Emerita, UCD
Nicholas Allen , Chair
Professor Tríona Ní Shiocháin:
Dr Seán Ua Súilleabháin
Dr Rebecca Anne Barr
Daniel Mulhall, Panel Chair
POETS, MUSICIANS & FILMMAKER
Martina Evans
Mícheál McCann
Fran Lock
Angela Leighton, Panel Chair
Paul Muldoon
Vona Groarke
Clair Wills, Chair
Irene Buckley
Marcella O’Connor
Celtic Music Club
South Australia
Tinteán 