Playing Marlacoo by Simon Mawhinney
During the years 2008-11, QUB lecturer Simon Mawhinney wrote a sequence of three works, each of which is intended to fill an entire concert. The final such work is Marlacoo for solo piano. This concert presents not only the world premiere, but serves to launch the CD recording of the work by Altarus Records. As soloist and chamber musician, Irish pianist Mary Dullea has built an impressive reputation as a performer and commissioner of new music, performing internationally and premiering many pieces including Marlacoo. www.marydullea.com
BMS Northern Lights Mini-Fest
Programme to include: Schubert - Schwanengesang (selection) Schumann - Liederkreis, op. 39 Quilter - Seven Elizabethan Lyrics Finzi - Let Us Garlands Bring
Up to 30 free tickets for QUB music & music technology students This concert is part of the 2013 Northern Lights Mini-Fest, Belfast Music Society’s showcase for young local artists (full details of these, and the other two events in the Mini-Fest, plus ticket booking details available at www.belfastmusicsociety.org).
‘A MATTER OF SOUND’ (RECOMPOSING THE CITY EVENT SERIES)
Labyrinthitis
‘Recomposing the City’ event series
Based in Berlin, Germany, Jacob Kirkegaard is a graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne. Since 1995, he has presented his works at galleries, museums, venues & conferences throughout the world. For today’s event, Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: Labyrinthitis is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience. The Wire selected a recording of Labyrinthitis as one of the ten best releases of 2008. This concert as well as the seminar by Kirkegaard on the 9th October are part of the “Recomposing the City: Sonic Arts & Urban Architecture” Project Research Group based at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities at Queen’s. It brings together over twenty researchers from Queen’s and beyond, and it is co-lead by staff in Creative Arts and Architecture. Events in the Recomposing the City series will explore the relationship of sound and music to the understanding, design, and development of urban environments. Details of this Group can be found at: www.recomposingthecity.org
Cultural Value Workshop
Dr O’Brien will present a wide ranging discussion of cultural policy and cultural value, based on his new book “Cultural Policy: Management, Value and Modernity in the Creative Industries” The talk will use a range of case studies, including analysis of work in the creative industries, urban regeneration and cultural consumption. The case studies will be the basis for a consideration of the complexity of understanding the value of culture in modernity. The session will conclude with reflections on the tensions between the government and administration of culture and the need for artistic and cultural practice to have critical distance from both state and market.
Would the real ‘il divino’ please step forward? Giants of the lute in the early seventeenth century
In their day, both Dowland and Laurencini were given the ultimate accolade, “il divino”. History has judged Dowland to be the greater, but the Knight of the Lute, who lived in Rome, had a bigger influence on friends and colleagues, perhaps because he was better at acquiring them than the notoriously prickly Dowland. From our post-romantic perspective we will always admire the Lone Wolf genius more than a collegial rival, but you can judge for yourself. The programme will include lute music by Laurencini’s heir to the title in Rome, Hieronymus Kapsberger.
The renowned Royal String Quartet from Poland launch their second season of concerts in Belfast with a programme which blends old and new music. The concert features the premiere of a new quartet by Belfast-based composer Rob Casey which explores novel ideas of musical space, made possible through the unique 3D sound capabilities of the Sonic Lab at SARC. The programme also includes works by Polish composers Mykietyn and Szymanski and concludes with Haydn’s Opus 76 quartet in Bb major.
BMS Northern Lights Mini-Fest
Up to 30 free tickets for QUB music & music technology students This concert is part of the 2013 Northern Lights Mini-Fest, Belfast Music Society’s showcase for young local artists (full details of these, and the other two events in the Mini-Fest, plus ticket booking details available at www.belfastmusicsociety.org).
Songs from the Silverbanks
Live diffusion of the songs of humpback whales recorded on location off the coast of the Dominican Republic earlier this year.
Born in 1953 in Sheffield where he attended Rowlinson School and Stannington College, Watson was a founding member of the influential Sheffield based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire during the 1970’s and early 1980’s. His sound recording career began in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television. Since then he has developed a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world. As a freelance composer and recordist for Film, TV & Radio, Watson specialises in natural history and documentary location sound together with sound design in post production.
His television work includes many programmes in the David Attenborough ‘Life’ series including ‘The Life of Birds’ which won a BAFTA Award for ‘Best Factual Sound’ in 1996. More recently Watson was the location sound recordist with David Attenborough on the BBC’s series ‘Frozen Planet’ which also won a BAFTA Award for ‘Best Factual Sound’ (2012).
Book Launch and Public Reading
One of the most important and original playwrights working in Ireland today, Owen McCafferty’s impressive body of work has been produced by every major theatre company in his native Belfast (Lyric, Tinderbox, Kabosh, Prime Cut) as well as Galway’s Druid Theatre Company, Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, and the National Theatre, London.
Although all of Owen’s work is characterised by his unique adaptation of Belfast speech, the universalism of his subjects and lyricism of his language transcend its local roots as the global routes of new productions of his work can testify, with his work being translated and performed in Japan, Germany, Chile, France, America and Australia in recent years. QUB Drama are delighted to host an evening to celebrate the publication of an edited collection of Owen’s stage plays that includes: The Waiting List, Shoot the Crow, Mojo Mickybo, Closing Time and Scenes from the Big Picture.
Owen will read from a number of these plays and short excerpts from Mojo Mickeybo will also be performed, followed by a reception in the Brian Friel Theatre.
Retrospective
Saturday 2 November 2013 marks the 25th anniversary of Stewart Parker. A scholar, poet, playwright, and music critic, he was a founding member of the Belfast Group and wrote extensively for stage, radio and screen.
Like J. M. Synge, he was cut down at a tragically young age whilst at his height of his powers, but he has bequeathed us all a body of work that establishes him as the most innovative and important playwright to have emerged from Belfast, and one of Ireland’s greatest twentieth century playwrights.
To commemorate Stewart’s 25th anniversary by celebrating his work, QUB Drama, with the kind support of BBC NI and Literary Belfast, will host a retrospective of Stewart’s work for stage, radio and screen to demonstrate Stewart’s extraordinary artistic achievement.
As part of this retrospective, QUB’s School of Creative Arts is delighted to be introduce the “The Annual Stewart Parker Memorial Lecture”, in honour of Stewart’s artistic achievement, and which will be delivered by the renowned actor for stage and screen, Stephen Rea: a long-time close friend and collaborator of Stewart’s.
The ‘Annual Stewart Parker Memorial Lecture’ will be delivered each year by a distinguished artist or intellectual from the field of Theatre, Film, Music and Sonic Arts to reflect both the School of Creative Arts multi-subject composition, and Stewart’s extraordinary eclecticism.
Reading excerpts from her new book: Theatre of Witness
Theatre of Witness chronicles the author’s 26 years of creating and producing theatre with people whose stories have previously gone untold, including prisoners and their families, refugees, survivors and former perpetrators of domestic abuse, ex-combatants and those who have lived through war. With an engaging and heartfelt narrative, it beautifully conveys the key principles of Theatre of Witness and explores the author’s own journey that lead to the conception and growth of this unique model of performance.
QUB Drama Students, directed by Mark Phelan
Pratt’s Fall by Stewart Parker. A Rehearsed Reading. Having found an old map which seems to prove that the Ireland’s St Brenda had discovered America, George Mahoney seduces Map Curator Victoria Pratt with it.
Part of the Stewart Parker Retrospective.
On August the 15th, 1945, after the official surrender of the Empire of Japan, Admiral Matome Ugaki led the last Special Attack Force pilots across the Pacific, to crash into American ships. Thirty-five years later, the men who serviced the aeroplanes are still meeting up for their annual dinner. Now settled into civilian jobs - dentist, baker, taxi-driver, insurance salesman - and with children and grandchildren, they bemoan the decay of traditional Japanese values. Hard liquor is imbibed, toasts raised to the memory of the heroic dead, and old rivalries resurface. The survivors’ dissatisfaction with post-war life comes to a head when, in a moment of drunken inspiration, Tokkotai the airline pilot decides on a symbolic gesture to show that the kamikaze spirit lives on
The fourth original Playhouse, Theatre of Witness production
In co-operation with Holywell Trust illuminates the stories of those in exile, those seeking safe haven, and those who have created oases of peace and healing in Northern Ireland.
The performers include refugee and asylum seekers from countries of war, as well as those who have sought or offered refuge following sectarianism and/or violence. Sanctuary also highlights moments of ordinary and humble peace building.
Sanctuary is created and directed by Teya Sepinuck, with music by Brian Irvine, puppetry by Aja Marneweck and film by Declan Keeney.
To book a tickets contact The Playhouse Box Office on 028 7126 8027
Admission is Free - please book seats to avoid disappointment. Each performance will be followed by a light reception
Oct 29th - 30th / 7:30pm
Dismissed from their teaching jobs, two young Belfast musicians pursue alternative careers in the music industry as songwriters, however, their catchpenny tunes which also involve ballads for fallen volunteers of both loyalist and republican paramilitaries leads to live bullets in the post and death threats, so they set off for Dublin and then London and eventually end up in the final Eurovision Song Contest! Success seems at hand and Belfast seems very far away... but for how long?
Parker later referred to the play as ‘a condensed female variant on the Dedalus-Bloom odyssey’. Ruby the Bloom figure, played by Frances Tomelty, is a vigorous if flu- sodden social worker who journeys the city sneezing and assisting others. Iris the Stephen figure, played by Aingeal Grehan, is a rather passive, incurious character who is regularly and haphazardly caught up in others’ activities.
A certain restless agitation governs most of the play’s characters, and the aggressive strains of Stiff Little Fingers sets the tone for Ruby’s odyssey through Belfast. By the play’s conclusion, a trio of responses to the conditions of Belfast life has emerged: the loss of sanity; emigration; or staying on and surviving together. Strikingly, it is the female characters that seem most rooted in the city.
Iris in the Traffic, Ruby in the Rain is an unlikely combination of elements. Yet the discreet Joyce reference, the punk gig, and the soundtrack, lend unexpected nuances to the social problem play structure that was emblematic of Play for Today.
Stiff Little Fingers provide the soundtrack, and singer Jake Burns appears as Iris’s friend.
A concert of sean nós singing from Donegal
Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde, from the northwest Gaeltacht of Donegal, has been immersed in the culture of the area from a young age. This region, which is the last Gaelic speaking area in Ulster, preserves not only the Donegal sean-nós songs but also songs from all over Ulster.
As a young singer his main influences were Caitlín Ní Dhomhnaill, Lillis Ó Laoire, Áine Bn. Uí Laoi, Mairead Ní Mhaonaigh and his mother Nellie Nic Giolla Bhríde. He studied music at university and now works as a full-time musician.
Directed by Frankie McCafferty
Northern Star is one of the greatest masterpieces of modern Irish drama, a play in which Parker’s biographer, Marilynn Richtarik, observes, the artist sought to articulate ‘a creative space between unionism and nationalism’ to prove ‘the possibility of a shared culture in Northern Ireland.’ Set in Belfast’s ‘Golden Age’ of the late 18th century, when the city was hailed as the ‘Athens of the North and was a harbinger of radical thought, Northern Star explores the life, death and legacy of Henry Joy McCracken, the leader of the United Irishmen in the 1798 Rising in a play that challenges nationalist and unionist notions of the past, to reveal how the origins of militant republicanism - in one of those ironies of Irish history - lay in the same protestant community that has inveighed against its modern manifestation.
Parker frequently expressed his deep appreciation of James Joyce’s work and with this play he most explicitly pays tribute to his mentor. Joyce in June is a clever concoction of fact andfiction combining a double narrative, citations from Joyce’s biography and work, with a typically incisive comic perspective.
The framing storyline follows Joyce and his companions shortly after Joyce began walking out with Nora Barnacle. The embedded storyline is imagined by Joyce while he poses for fellow student, Constantine Curran, who is taking his photograph — an iconic image of the young Joyce.
Parker’s “television postscript to Ulysses” features Molly Bloom, Blazes Boylan and an assortment of Dublin singers on a concert tour that begins, fatefully, in Belfast. Northern piety clashes with Southern frivolity resulting in a dramatic breakdown of decorum and raucous laughter at the play’s finale. If the production of Joyce in June is rather low budget and studio-bound, the cast energetically draw out the wit, playfulness and theatricality of Parker’s script. Roles are artfully doubled—Bridget de Courcy plays Nora and Molly with seductive charm; Stephen Rea is both the abstemious Stanislaus Joyce and the inebriated Mick McIntosh; Gabriel Byrne performs the dapper Ted Keogh and the Don Juan figure, Blazes Boylan.
Joyce in June is a remarkable tribute to Joyce, though as Parker admits “there’s a tiny motive ofrevenge as well for those invariably unpleasant portraits of Northerners in the Joyce canon, the likes of Mr Alleyne in “Counterparts,” MacAlister of the oblong skull in A Portrait, the headmaster Deasy in Ulysses.”
Directed by Frankie McCafferty
Stewart Parker’s extraorindary first play Spokesong is set in a Belfast bicycle shop, owned by Frank Stock, who dreams of reviving interest in cycling in his native city. The city fathers, however, are not convinced. Spokesong is told with the aid of flashbacks, trick cyclists and juggling.
Images of the Two Traditions. A poignant and profound interview with Stewart Parker filmed several months before his death whilst he was enjoying the success of his last, and greatest play, Pentecost.
The Inaugural Stewart Parker Memorial Lecture
Saturday 2 November 2013 marks the 25th anniversary of Stewart Parker. A poet and playwright who wrote extensively for stage, radio and screen, Stewart Parker is the most innovative and important playwright to have emerged from Belfast and one of Ireland’s greatest twentieth century playwrights. As Stewart’s work spans Theatre, Film and Music, the School of Creative Arts at QUB is delighted to be introduce the “The Annual Stewart Parker Memorial Lecture”, in honour of Stewart’s artistic achievement. The inaugural lecture will be delivered by the renowned actor for stage and screen, Stephen Rea: a long- time close friend and collaborator of Stewart’s.
BBC Film Version
Set in East Belfast at the height of the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Strike, Pentecost tells the story of four ‘refugees’, gathered together in a working-class parlour-house where, against the background of political strife, they work out their personal relationships with each other, the world outside, and their past. Only Marian is aware of a fifth presence - the ghost of Lily Matthews, who returns to haunt the house. This BBC television version of Stewart’s final play was adapted by his partner Lesley Bruce
By Stewart Parker (Radio Play)
Iceberg relates the purgatorial plight of two shipyard workers, Danny and Hugh, a Catholic and a Protestant, killed in the construction of the Titanic - Belfast’s ‘ proudest offering to the Empire - and to the world!”, and whose ghosts wander the fateful ship’s decks on her maiden voyage.
By Stewart Parker (Radio Play)
Parker’s play “I’m a Dreamer, Montreal” won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. It was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 in April 1975 and televised for ITV Playhouse in March 1979. Set in Belfast, it tells the tale of music librarian, Nelson Gloverby, who lives in a dream world. A Showband singer by night, he is unconcerned with audience irritation at his inability to stick to the proper lyrics and is innocently drawn into the brutality of the Troubles when he meets siren Sandra Carse.
By Stewart Parker (Radio Play)
Stewart’s last and darkest radio play, featuring Donal McCann in the lead role as (mad) Sweeney, a frustrated travel writer on the cusp on a nervous breakdown, is a beautifully crafted work that’s described as a ‘secular travesty of Dante’s inferno’. First broadcast in 1984, it also features a young Ian McElhinney.
Music for Clarinet and Computer
The New York Times calls Esther Lamneck “an astonishing virtuoso”. Winner of the prestigious Pro Musicis Award, she has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras, with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, and with renowned chamber music and improvised music artists throughout the world. A versatile performer and an advocate of contemporary music, she is known for her work with electronic media including interactive arts, movement, dance and improvisation.
Program:
Robert Rowe - Cigar Smoke
Paul Wilson - It Had to Be You
Lawrence Fritts - Musicometry I
Izzi Ramkissoon - Domesticated Animalia Paola Lopreiato - Inner Voices
This concert will include a number of Iain’s recent pieces for fixed medium - both diffused stereo and multichannel - and will also feature the premiere of a new piece for bass trombone and live electronics, commissioned and performed by Paul Wilson.
Iain McCurdy is a composer whose output includes electroacoustic music for fixed medium, music for conventional instrumentation and sound installation. Recent work has also included instrument building and the use of electronic sensors to facilitate audience interaction. Iain is currently based in Berlin but is originally from Belfast where he studied composition at SARC.
Pianist Ismael Florit and Cellist Dermot Clenaghan will be performing a selection of works for their respective instruments.
These young musicians won this opportunity to perform for this event after receiving top marks in their final performance recitals in June 2013.
We are proud to have them back in the capacity of showcasing our musical talents at the School of Creative Arts.
Mozart - KV 465 The Dissonance Quartet
Szymanski - new work (UK premiere)
Beethoven - op. 135
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