Arts & Culture

Unless you’ve been living under a cabbage for the past few weeks, the world of television has been consumed by Euro 2012. Being a fan, my entire week has so far been spent glued to watching people kick a ball around, thus I’ve seen little else by way of programming.

ENNIS could be in line to become one of three locations chosen for a major event as part of the Gathering celebrations next year. The first step in this will be the hosting of a free music event in the town later this month, with big name acts set to perform.Love: Live Music is a nationwide celebration of music taking place to mark International Music Day on June 21 and as part of this, Ennis will host Clare Connections, a music gathering in the heart of the town.Full details for the event will be announced next week, but The Clare Champion can confirm that the line-up already includes one of  Clare’s most popular groups, The Kilfenora Céilí Band. Also performing will be new trio The Teetotalers, comprising Martin Hayes, Kevin Crawford and John Doyle and Liveireland.com’s performers of the decade: Lúnasa.According to Tracy Crawford of Bally O Promotions, one of the team of locals behind the event, “Love:live music is …

Traditional music will reverberate in one of the county’s most unlikely locations later this month. Castleconnell Stone Fort, thought to date back to between 400 and 1,200 AD, will host an Irish traditional music concert on Tuesday, June 19 at 9.30pm.

SHANNON Gospel Choir are featuring on Paddy Casey’s new single Wait which is being released this week.“We had actually sung this song with Paddy a few weeks after he wrote it in 2009. He taught it to us just before we went on stage with him in Dolan’s and when I say just, I mean just before we went on,” said Derek Barrett, a founding member of the choir.“Over the last couple of years, we have got to know Paddy pretty well, he’s a great guy and he planted the seed of doing something together again, so we agreed to do a joint gig in the Oakwood Arms last October. The concert was a huge success and the hotel was buzzing on the night, helped in no small means, by the surprise appearance of Paddy’s close friend Declan O’Rourke who took some time out from his national tour of his latest album Mag Pi Zie. He joined Paddy and the …

THE Riches of Clare free lunchtime traditional music concert series is underway and is visiting a number of venues around the county.

A TRILOGY of short plays entitled Underground will be brought to the stage at Glór on June 21 by the Limerick-based Orchard Theatre Company.

IT seems there is no margin for error for a new crime thriller, written by a new Irish author, as it recently was named the winner of Legend Publishing UK’s traditional publishing prize for fiction 2012.