Arts & Culture

The Clare Memory Orchestra a uniquely Irish orchestra founded by internationally acclaimed composer Dave Flynn, comes to Glór onFriday, September 21, at 8pm as part of the Culture Night series.The orchestra features Liz Carroll on fiddle, Mairtín O’Connor on accordion and Mick O’Brien on pipes and sees composer Dave Flynn combine some of Ireland’s leading traditional and classical musicians to create a distinctive new sound.The orchestra has a string section infused with the sound of Irish fiddles, a wind section mixing flutes, whistles and pipes with the haunting tone of the oboe. While a harmonic background of Irish harp and guitar and a dynamic rhythm section mixing rumbling bass and ticking percussion provide the means for this unique sound.The orchestra gets its name from the fact that the musicians play from memory, without the barrier of sheet-music on stage.The Clare Memory Orchestra will have its official launch concert in its adopted home of Glór in Ennis during culture night on …

THOSE of a delicate disposition might be best to avoid Keith Barry’s Eight Deadly Sins, which will be at Glór on September 27.The Waterford man made his name with a magic show but his repertoire has evolved fairly dramatically and the show will be quite outrageous, he says. “To sum it up in a few words, mentalism, hypnotism, mind-reading, profanity and nudity. If you’re easily offended, don’t come to the show, I’ll say that much. Each of the demonstrations comes under the umbrella of the existing seven deadly sins and there is an eighth deadly sin for the purposes of the show. Over the course of the night, 50 people are selected, completely at random from the audience and landed on stage. Two people from the audience will be going to confession and I’ll have to hack into their brains and figure out what sins they’re thinking of, while they’re in the confession box I have on stage.“You can imagine …

US singer/songwriter Malcolm Holcombe will be playing at the Highway in Crusheen on September 29.When The Clare Champion spoke to him last Friday, he had just arrived in Europe. “We start the tour this evening, with a show in Norway. I can’t remember where it is but I’m in Oslo now,” he said. He is looking forward to coming back to Ireland. “I’ve been over several times. They’re loveable people, wonderful. It’s a lot of fun and it’s good to get back to some roots there in Ireland. I’m very excited about it.”A native of North Carolina, his distinctive accent and turn of phrase set him apart from most performers who make their way as far as the West of Ireland. His most recent album Down the River has just been released and he is reluctant to offer any firm views on it, saying it’s up to the listener. “I hope it’s pensive. I hope it evokes emotion and thoughtfulness. …

CLARE acts are getting together with artists around the country to record a charity single to raise funds for Claregalway girl Lily-Mae Morrison, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer known as Neuroblastoma, which affects one in 100,000 children in Ireland.Lily-Mae is the daughter of dancers, Judith Sibley and Leighton Morrison, who are best known in Galway for their work with Chrysalis Dance and Youth Ballet West. Catríona Hayes from Lahinch is Lily-Mae’s childminder and is appealing to the public in Clare to support the single, which is a rendition of Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. It is hoped the song will take the Christmas number-one spot in Ireland this year.The family face a long battle and need to raise significant funds to help with their fight and to help raise funds, the Sunni-Mae Trust for Lily-Mae was officially launched on July 6 in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway.“Mae has just completed eight long, hard weeks of chemotherapy …

LawlessDIRECTED BY: John HillcoatSTARRING: Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Clarke, Guy PearceCERT: 16 MY late grandfather claimed we had at least one gangster in the family, an emigrant who fell in with the Mob in Chicago back in the Prohibition era. I’ve never found any evidence of it myself but then, if our cousin ever fell back out with the Mob, nobody else will have found any trace of him either. He won’t have been the only man last seen alive on the road to the swamp. Matt Bondurant really did have gangsters in his family, or family who knew gangsters – a grandfather and his brothers who ran moonshine in the Virginia mountains. That’s the story he tells in his book, The Wettest County in the World, upon which Lawless is based. By his account, their acquaintance with the Mob was reluctant but it’s still a better story than mine. Which is no story at all.A tale like that …

AFTER the lull of the summer months, the drama has picked up with increasing speed on the small screen, so much so that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with all the new arrivals.Top of the list has to be the Lazarus return of Dallas. Back in the day it was almost as important as attending mass. The country religiously tuned in each week to find out how the Ewings would find new and interesting ways to torture each other or, on rare occasions, team up to inflict equal damage on rival Cliff Barnes. They were a central point of popular culture, posing monumental questions like ‘Who shot JR?’The trio of JR, Bobby and Sue Ellen were the cornerstones of the previous effort but to make the new version less geriatric and more acceptable to the plethora of youngsters who are new to the Dallas phenomena, much of the action this time round focuses on the rivalry between cousins John …

If you’ve ever left the cinema eyeing up walls to jump off and do some sort of cool spinning back-kick, or finished a dvd at home and gone looking for your dumbbells so you can “get back into training”, then you’re an action film sucker and you need to see The Raid.Everyone else should see it too, given that it is a surprisingly tense little affair – not unlike the original Assault on Precinct 13 in its sense of constant threat and paranoia. For action movie fanatics however, it might just be the most exciting thing you’ve seen in years.Remember how The Matrix made kung fu cool? Sure, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was beautiful, balletic and other-worldly and there wasn’t a punch or a kick thrown that couldn’t be found in any number of Hong Kong flicks from the 1980s but The Matrix had a techno soundtrack, shapes and leather jackets rather than dodgy dubbing and baggy leggings.Then came Ong …

BÓTHAR has joined ranks with Shannon Airport to present is photographic exhibition GROW in the airport’s Transit Lounge.The exhibition is a collection of photographs taken in Uganda last year by award winning photographer Sean Curtin, when he accompanied Bóthar patron Neven Maguire to one of the international aid organisation’s key projects. Speaking at the launch of the exhibition Bóthar CEO Dave Moloney said the airport is a very apt location for the exhibition. “We are deeply indebted to Shannon for the ongoing co-operation that we received over the years here and the hosting of this exhibition is another example of that. Since 1991 we have been transporting our dairy heifers, goats and pigs to the many struggling families in the developing world. Almost all of these airlifts have departed from Shannon. We hope that as people travel through the airport, this exhibition will be a reminder to them of the daily struggle that life is for so many across the …