Tag Archives: Culturlann Sweeney

CULTÚRLANN Sweeney in Kilkee plays host to the renowned BBC 2 Folk Singer of the Year, Ríoghnach Connolly, next week. Fresh from a recent performance on the Tommy Tiernan Show with guitarist Stuart McCallum, the Armagh woman is looking forward to their upcoming Kilkee concert on Monday, February 19. Ríoghnach, who is signed to internationally renowned musician Peter Gabriel’s Real World record label, is on a short Irish tour with McCallum before they tour Britain and Scandinavia for a few months. The duo is known as The Breath, and Ríoghnach is also lead singer with the Afro Celt Sound System. She is also nominated for Best Original Folk Song this year at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards for her collaborative single ‘Not Your fight’ with The Henry Girls. Speaking to The Clare Champion, she is modest about the BBC2 award. “As far as I think I broke the whole competition – it hasn’t happened since. I am still dining …

LEGENDARY Irish singer-songwriter Andy Irvine is coming to perform at Cultúrlann Sweeney, Kilkee on Easter Saturday, April 8. Having travelled the world with bands such as Sweeney’s Men, Patrick Street, Planxty and, more recently, Mozaik, Andy continues to pursue new combinations and styles of music. He has broadened his musical horizons over the course of his 40-year career to encompass the musical styles of countries he visits, such as the Balkan folk style of playing. After his introduction to the world of touring with Sweeney’s Men in 1965, he continued to travel the world, leaving the band in 1968 to pursue his wanderlust. He travelled through Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia, studying the music traditions and styles of these nations. It was these journeys, which led him to adopt the bouzouki in his performance. This new instrument allowed him to develop his own style while learning that of the Balkan countries he visited. On his return to Ireland, Andy formed Planxty …

CUAR, the Irish chamber music ensemble founded by Neil Ó Loclainn from Ballyvaughan, will play in Cultúrlann Sweeney, Kilkee this Thursday. Neil’s talents have been recognised by some of the greatest traditional musicians from Clare in terms of his groundbreaking work. Cuar explores composition and improvisation within the framework of Irish traditional music, playing new music written especially for them. Citing influences as varied as Tommie Potts, Tony MacMahon, sean-nós singing and uilleann pipe music, on the one hand, and the Karnatak (South Indian) music tradition, composers Morton Feldman, Béla Bartók and downtown jazz on the other, the music creates a boundary-less style rich in melodic detail. Together they forge a unique sound. The group has been featured at festivals and events throughout Ireland and Europe including Paris Jazz Festival, Jazzy Nights Brussels, Galway Jazz Festival, Féile na Bealtaine, Dingle, Masters of Tradition, Bantry, Kaleidoscope Night Dublin, and NUI Galway Arts in Action concert series. They are currently touring Ireland …

AN EXCITING mix of trad and classical sounds comes to Kilkee on Saturday, October 29, as the West Ocean String Quartet come to West Clare.  Among the programme on the night will be pieces from their latest, and fifth album, Atlantic Edge. Blending traditional and classical elements, the album was recorded in Dublin  over three days in November 2019, and marked the Quartet’s two decades together. The album release was to have been accompanied by a tour of venues along the Atlantic coast in Spring of 2020, but as with so many other cultural events fell victim to Covid. The Quartet’s founder, Belfast musician, composer and television producer, Neil Martin, said that the Quartet is thrilled to be fulfilling the original tour schedule, including Cultúrlann Sweeney on Saturday. The repertoire for their Clare concert  is music from or about the west of Ireland, both traditional and newly-composed.  The Quartet celebrates the deeply rich vein of airs and dance tunes that …

ART lovers are able to enjoy a brand new exhibition of work by Clare artist Cathal Butler from anywhere in the world. Clare Arts Office, in conjunction with the Cultúrlann Sweeney Gallery, have launched Cathal’s exhibition ‘Scenes from West Clare’ which will run at the Kilkee gallery until September 23. The pictures for the Kilkee exhibition are all of iconic sites and scenes in County Clare, painted in oils. However, you don’t have to head to West Clare to see the works with Cathal embracing multimedia through a virtual tour of the exhibition available online at: https://clarearts.ie/events/scenes-from-west-clare/ Cathal Butler is registered as a professional member with Visual Artists Ireland, working from EASI Art Studios in Ennis, and mainly paints landscapes in oils, completing several collections for hotels around the country. Along with the pictures on sale, there is also an opportunity to buy prints of the pictures, both framed and unframed, with limited editions of each image also available.

A PLAY focusing on one of the most intense incidents in the War of Independence in Clare comes to Cultúrlann Sweeney in Kilkee, on Friday night (August 12). The drama, entitled Two Days in September, secured prestigious funding support from Clare County Council through the Decade of Centenary Arts Project Awards, and premiered in North Clare in June.  Written by Doolin-based playwright Dermott Petty, the play tells the story of the Rineen Ambush. The drama unfolds, in film and theatre form, and traces the events of autumn, 1920, when a British Army convoy was ambushed by the Mid-Clare Brigade of the IRA. It follows the aftermath of revenge and the sacking, looting and burning of the villages of Ennistymon, Lahinch and Miltown Malbay by the Black and Tans on September 22 and 23.  “West Clare in 1920 was recovering from a land war, famines, World War 1 and Spanish influenza,” said Dermott. “While a beautiful part of the world had …

AN exploration of the Gaelic songs of County Clare has unearthed 130 songs, with that figure continuing to grow. The outcome of the project, carried out by actor, writer and director Diarmuid de Faoite titled Dúchas is Dóchas (Heritage and Hope), will be launched by the Clare Arts Office and The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) this Saturday in Cultúrlann Sweeney, Kilkee. The work was done as part of the third Duala: Creator-in-Residence Scheme. “It wasn’t today nor yesterday that the people of County Clare fell in love with music and the county has a deserved reputation in the field of traditional music,” said de Faoite. “Despite this reputation, however, songs in Irish are rarely heard and even rarer still are songs in Irish from the county, save the ubiquitous ‘Beidh Aonach Amárach’,” he noted. “Though the music has been preserved and enriched, our voice was lost quite suddenly and traumatically with the rapid loss of language” he added, posing …

The “Home” art exhibition will be held at Cultúrlann Sweeney in Kilkee from August 30 to October 2 in memory Betty Cauldwell, the artist who passed away in April, 2020. Having been born in Kilrush in 1926 and educated there thereafter, West Clare’s sea and landscapes feature in the legacy that Betty leaves behind. She was the eldest of five children of Dr Dick and Enid Counihan, and studied in University College Dublin to become a dentist, only taking up painting in her 50s and continuing to paint until her eyesight began to fail, shortly after her husband, Peter Cauldwell, died in 2001. Betty spent most of her life in England with Peter, a fellow dentist who wrote poetry in his retirement, but the pair returned “home” to West Clare as often as they could throughout their lives. Betty trained at Lichfield School of Art and exhibited with the Lichfield Society of Artists and the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, …