EntertainingSligo
FAMINE WALK
The Glens Centre hosts a celebration of the Great Irish Famine.
On September 14 th, Musicians, Poets and historians collaborate to deliver unique celebration of the Great Irish Famine.
At 6pm we will gather at the famine graveyard in Manorhamilton where Prin Duignan will talk on aspects of the famine in Leitrim including an account of the young Edwards sisters who walked from Derrygonnelly to Manorhamilton workhouse in search of shelter and food.
A lament will be played by piper Pietro Malaguti , and there will be a reading of Famine by poet Terry McDonagh.
Our guest of honor will be local campaigner Rose Mc Padden, whose campaign instigated the reburial of over 70 famine victims at the site.
Later that evening we will be joined by joined by award winning singer/ songwriter Declan O’Rourke as he brings his show The Chronicles of The Great Irish Famine to The Glens Centre.
CHERISH THE LADIES
Super-group, Cherish the Ladies return to the Hawk’s Well Theatre this September on Sunday the 23rd as they tour their new album, Heart of the Home.
“It is simply impossible to imagine an audience that wouldn’t enjoy what they do,” says the Boston Globe speaking of Cherish the Ladies. This long-running, Grammy-nominated, Irish-American super group was formed in New York City in 1985 to celebrate the rise of extraordinary women in what had been a male-dominated Irish music scene and for more than three decades, these women have toured the world, played the White House and the Olympics and recorded 17 critically acclaimed albums including their latest release, “Heart of the Home”.
DECLAN O’ROURKE
Conjuring mysteries from the deep, this extraordinary sorcerer of song weaves his soulful melodies through half-remembered moments and dreams long-treasured.
An award-winning, double-platinum songwriter, performer and story-teller, join Declan for his latest song-cycle, The Chronicles Of The Great Irish Famine.
Declan ‘s songs are infused with subtleties of compassion, the yearning of history, the presence of sorrow, the patience of mortality, the balm of tenderness, and the breath of hope. Live in concert, O’Rourke moves seamlessly from hilarious spontaneity to transporting beauty.
Glen Hansard calls him “a timeless troubadour with a voice that breaks through all your defences and gets to the heart of the matter”. His songs have been admired by James Taylor and John Sheahan (The Dubliners); by Eddi Reader, John Prine and Paul Weller. BBC Radio notes:
“There is something so simple but overwhelmingly powerful about the melodies and emotive storytelling.”
Born in Dublin, now living on the wild windswept west coast of Ireland, O’Rourke spent eight years of his youth in Australia. At 13, a priest in Kyabram gave him his first guitar. His debut album, aptly named “Since Kyabram”, was nominated for three Meteor Awards, including “Best Male Artist”, “Best New Album”, and “Best Folk/Trad Artist”, and achieved double Platinum.
TALES OF HOFFMAN
Irish National Opera kicks off its largest tour of 2018 with eleven performances of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. The tour starts in Dublin on Friday 14 September, touring to Dún Laoghaire, Navan, Limerick, Cork, Tralee, Kilkenny, Galway, Letterkenny and its final tour date will be in Sligo at the Hawk’s Well Theatre on Saturday the 6 th of October.
The tour will recreate the tuneful, haunted, sometimes daemonic world of French composer Jacques Offenbach’s masterpiece, The Tales of Hoffmann. Offenbach was 19 th-century France’s greatest composer of operetta and didn’t live to put the finishing touches to his sole fully-fledged opera, The Tales of Hoffmann.
The work is based on three macabre stories by the romantic German writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann. Each deals with a failed love affair, the first an entanglement with a mechanical singing doll, the second involving a singer afflicted with a malady that means she will die if she dares to sing, the third an infatuation with a Venetian courtesan. And of course there’s also Stella, the woman he is in love with at the moment.
The eloquent singer Julian Hubbard, praised by Bachtrack for his “lyrical, expressive tenor”, is the luckless, inebriated hero. The spectacular Irish soprano Claudia Boyle, complimented by Neue Musikzeitung for her “stupendous coloratura sophistication and radiance,” deftly morphs into the women, present and past, that Hoffmann is obsessed with. Majestic mezzo soprano Gemma Ní Bhriain, whose “rich mezzo timbre” has been noted by Forum Opéra, tries to hold it all together as his staunch friend, Nicklausse. And some of Ireland’s best singing talent joins in the fray.
Tickets for this event at the Hawk’s Well Theatre are €30 with a special rate of 15 for those u18s. All tickets will have a €1 Renovation Fee surcharge and are available at the theatre box office at 071/61518 or online at www.hawkswell.com