Arts & Culture

WELL-known Ennis chamber choir, Cantare, are practising hard these days under the very expert baton of choir director, Michael Hennessy with their sights set on competing in the upcoming City of Derry International Choir Festival. The festival is taking place from October 19 to 23 and features a range of singing activities and performances for everyone in a wide variety of venues around Derry and its environs. Cantare will perform against a host of national and international competitors on the afternoon of Saturday, October 22 in the Millennium Forum in the historic walled city. Choirs will travel to Derry from as far afield as Estonia, Sweden and the US, and from closer to home including Dublin and Galway. According to Michael, “It’s great to have the opportunity to compete, to have a Clare choir perform in such a renowned competition. All the members have worked exceptionally hard over the last number of months – I’m confident we can hold our …

HAVING run the Wings festival in Shannon this summer, Damian O’Rourke has endeavoured to keep live music happening regularly in Shannon, and is now behind a couple of ongoing events around the town. One of these is a monthly Wings session  in the Shannon Springs hotel. “It’s the last Sunday of every month, it has come out of the Wings festival in June,” Damian explained. “We had the wind down session for that, it was an immense day, and we just wanted to keep it going. We had something the following month and I was thinking of having it every second Sunday, but a friend of mine recommended doing the last Sunday of the month because it’s easy for people to remember. “We’ve been doing it since June and it’s going well, it starts at 1pm on the Sunday and it keeps going until whenever.” It is open to everyone, whether they want to play or just listen. “It’s a …

WAKING up to the beauty of nature is the theme of a new exhibition that will open in Kinvara next week.  The show by artist Nicole O’Donnell is entitled ‘Awakening’ and will run at the Courthouse, in conjunction with Kinvara Area Visual Arts (KAVA) from October 20 to 26. Nicole is a Galway-based artist who has a Masters Degree in Creative Practice and an Honours BA in Contemporary Art, from the School of Design and Creative Arts, at the Atlantic Technological University (ATU).  “As a visual artist who grew up in the West of Ireland, my practice is influenced by the wilderness of the Irish landscape, daily observations and the natural world to create imaginative landscape paintings that deal with themes of experience of place, memory and are inspired by the endless complexity found in nature,” Nicole explained. She added that her solo show, ‘Awakening’, “means “an act or moment of becoming suddenly aware of something”. “This collection of works …

ANTICIPATION is building ahead of the release of the new single by acclaimed Clare-based singer-songwriter, Steo Wall.  ‘More Blacks More Dogs More Irish’ is a hard-hitting new single, whose name is a play on words taken from the signs that used to hang on shops and pubs in England in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The single will be the first release taken from Steo’s eagerly anticipated second studio album, Street Wisdom For Lost Souls. The track features Toshín, an African Irish soul singer who starred along- side Steo and a host of other emerging artists on a two-part RTÈ music series entitled Foster & Allen, Lost in Music. The second and final episode airs this Thursday, October 13, at 10.15pm on RTÈ One.  Mixing traditional Irish folk with some contemporary Irish rap, Steo brings the listener on a journey from the badlands of his native Dublin to the beauty of the West coast of Ireland. Steo paints a picture of …

SIX schools in Clare are set to join the Creative Schools initiative, the Arts Council have announced. The local schools are among 186 schools and centres across Ireland who applied to be part of the initiative. The Clare schools to take part are: Scoil Naisiunte Eoin Baiste, Ballyvaughan NS; Connolly National School; Ennis Community College; Scariff Community College; Scoil na Mainistreach Quin Dangan and Eidhneach National School in Inagh.  According to the Arts Council the very high level of applications to be part of this two-year process reflects the importance that schools and youth reach centres put on creativity and their ambition to celebrate and put creative thinking at the very heart of what they do.  Participation in the Creative Schools initiative aims to empower children and young people to develop, implement and evaluate arts and creative activity throughout their schools/centres and stimulate additional ways of working which reinforce the impact of creativity on children and young people’s learning, development and well-being.  The initiative is designed to provide opportunities for children and young people to build their …

‘THE difficult second album’, a remark that’s often made about artists and the challenge of following up on strong first releases. The opposite is the case for the second album of Miltown Malbay musician Shona Blake who has delivered with ‘A Woman Knows’, her stunning new album. In it, she reveals huge growth as a person and as an artist and it’s no surprise that the plaudits are coming her way.  “This is everything I ever wanted in an album,” she says from her home in Miltown Malbay. “I knew I wanted to take my time and I knew how I wanted it to sound. It started in 2018 exactly one year after my mum passed and we continued to record once a year around her anniversary. She was there, her spirit a guiding light throughout”. Shona’s husband Paul McCabe is her longtime collaborator and he was very much part of the journey. “Everything between myself and Paul was live. …

THIS year’s Kilkee Playwright Festival is responding to the climate emergency and includes online playwriting workshops for stage, radio and a discussion on developing ecological performances’ in community spaces. Jenny Bassett, who curates the Kilkee Playwright Festival said, “We feel privileged to have highly experienced and extremely talented, award winning dramatists facilitating workshops. “Added to that we shall be focusing on the most urgent and important issue of our time – the climate crisis. “It is hoped that the seeds from this year’s festival grow to mighty trees and go on to be developed and performed at next year’s festival. “Because we are funded by Clare County Council we have adopted a Pay What You Can pricing policy so that everyone has access to participating.” On October 10 from 6.30 pm to 10 pm Gavin Kostik the Literary Manager with FISHAMBLE will be running an online playwriting workshop for stage. Participants shall have the chance to engage with Fishamble’s Tiny …

TEXTILES inspired by summer days in the South of Italy will bring some welcome sunshine to Kinvara this month, in a new exhibition at the Courthouse. Kinvara Area Visual Arts (KAVA) presents ‘Vitae Rurale’ by Isabella Florio. This ten-day exhibition will open on Friday next, October 7.  Isabella is an Italian designer and textile artist who completed her honours BA in Design at the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) earlier this year. She first became interested in art and design as a young child, a hobby she also enjoyed throughout her teenage years. After secondary school, she chose to pursue a creative career, moving to Dublin in 2016 to join The Grafton Academy, where she studied Fashion Design for over a year. Here, Isabella gained skills in pattern drafting and garment construction. After deciding to expand her knowledge and explore a new avenue of education, she enrolled in ATU to study Fashion and Textile Design. Her work there was centred around …