Tag Archives: music

Events

Cork International Choral Festival hits the real capital

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Warm-up time for the 55th Cork International Choral Festival
Warm-up time for the 55th Cork International Choral Festival

“4,600 voices, 85 performances, from 22 countries for 5 days in Cork.”

That’s the 55th Cork International Choral Festival which kicks of this coming Wednesday and runs until Sunday May 3rd. There’s a lovely variety of performances on offer from chamber groups to children’s choirs and numerous competitive events in between including the prestigious Fleischmann International Trophy Competition which takes places on Saturday.

Some performances that grabbed my attention on browsing over the brochure that may tickle your choral fancy:

  • Opening Gala Concert with Cork Symphony Orchestra: A Sea Symphony
  • Shandon Sunrise with Cathal O’Baoill & Gothenburg Youth Choir
  • The National Chamber Choir of Ireland: From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
  • Fleischmann International Trophy Competition
  • Closing Gala Concert

Most if not all ticketed events are on sale via the online booking system, over the phone on + 353 (21) 4501673 or in person at the Everyman Palace Theatre box office. Family rates, group rates and season rates are also available. Check out the website at www.corkchoral.ie.

Across from City Hall on Lapp’s Quay there will be a Festival Food Fair on the boardwalk from 10am to 4pm on Saturday while The Clarion Hotel will be satisfying your afternoon & late night choral needs with performances in the Atrium on Saturday & Sunday afternoons from 2.30pm – 6pm and again from 10pm – 2am. 

Looking forward to it!

Random

Tasty morsels for lunchtime enjoyment

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Beach in Bishopsquarters, Ballyvaughan, Co.Clare

Beach in Bishopsquarters, Ballyvaughan, Co.Clare

Stumbled across this photo the other day – it was one of the first I took with my little red camera that my dad got me for my 21st ChristmasBirthday (born 26th Dec, this is what it has become). The beach at home in the month of January. Nature is stunning.

Des wrote a lovely post about the death of the ‘desktop metaphor’ over on the Contrast blog. 

Stu is climbing the viral charts in the Buzzfeed competition with his fantastic ‘Songs Reimagined as Alert Boxes‘. You have got to check them out!

Got my tickets in the post for the closing gala concert at the Cork International Choral Festival yesterday. It’s taking place on the May bank holiday weekend and there’s loads of international choral music on all over the city for the long weekend. As if you needed a reason to visit Cork anyway.

Create Ireland, a start-up incubator type affair that’s now enrolling for 2009.

A List Apart has 2 interesting articles up for edition #282, ‘In Defense of Eye Candy‘ & ‘Real Fonts on the Web: An Interview with The Font Bureau’s David Berlow‘.

An article in The Examiner today that seems to be essentially saying that newspapers are better than blogs amongst other bizarre and questionable things. Get ready to face-palm.

Reviews

Review: Handels’ Messiah at Christ Church Cathedral

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Booklet for Handels Messiah
Booklet for Handels' Messiah

On Thursday last, I had the fortune of getting to hear a powerful, moving & inspiring rendition of George Fredrick Handels’ famous work, ‘Messiah’. As part of a week of celebrations in Dublin called ‘Handel 250′, the magnificent choir of Christ Church Cathedral, The Orchestra of Saint Cecilia, soloists Deboragh Abbot (soprano), Duncan Brickenden (alto), Peter Davoren (tenor) & Philip O’Reilly (bass) gathered in the beautiful venue of Christ Church Cathedral for a performance of the ‘Messiah’, a piece first performed in Dublin in April of 1742.

My first memories of hearing this beautiful piece go back to when I was in 2nd class of primary school, about 8 years old. Our teacher at the time occasionally had a ‘music appreciation’ lesson & more often than not it was an aria or chorus from ‘Messiah’. I have for years failed to catch a live performance of it and my am I sorry it’s taken me so long to do so. It was magnificent from start to finish. The infamous ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ didn’t disappoint – I haven’t felt goosebumps race from head to toe like the ones I felt on hearing the voices raising the roof with their rendition of the powerful chorus. Admittedly, I was moved to tears by it! 

Congratulations to all involved in the performance and in the festival that ran all week which seemed to offer up a fantastic selection of musical delights. There’s photos and video from the week over at the Temple Bar Cultural Trust website.

You can sample some choral tracks I recorded (only when the blinking iPhone decided it wanted to) right here.

Random

Tasty titbits for your lunchtime

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After an insane couple of days it’s time to resume normal blogging services. Don’t worry though, the Fine Gael website fiasco hasn’t gone to bed yet – I’ve given it a permanent home here and George Hook & his Newstalk team are having a look at it today in advance of their show later this evening.

I was at Doves in the Olympia, Dublin last night. One of my favourite bands of all time & it was amazing as usual. Some photos on Pix.ie, down below is a noisy little video and the first of a range I am going to classify as ‘Danceycam‘ (I continue to shake booty & enjoy myself while filming).

RTE have launched their RTE Player online service. Nice design effort & video quality but the use of Flash only across the site is questionable in terms of usability.

Awesome t-shirt design for the Blacknight T-Shirt competition from Nice Cube Design.

Registration for Bizcamp Belfast is now open.

Loopthing is the Tuesday push (I think!)

Bollywood Dancing on Sunday for Big Fish Films was fantastic fun despite the terrible sunburn I suffered

Handel’s Messiah at Christchurch last week was epic, so epic a tear or two may have escaped me. Will put up MP3s later on for your aural pleasure.


Doves – There Goes The Fear on Danceycam from Stephanie Francis on Vimeo.