Review of the Year Top Clare Arts Events 2011

Top Clare Arts Events 2011 A personal selection

Although I have travelled far in pursuit of excellent arts events, some of the best events were right on my doorstep in Clare. Here is my personal selection of the highlights of 2011. Click on the highlighted text for my review.

Music 

Best Opera   Dublin Youth Opera Co. Jukebox Opera
A company of teenage opera singers at  Ennis Friary (including Ennis native Ruth Kelly) were stunning in their Jukebox opera , Thicker than Water       

Thom Moore

 Best Songwriter Thom Moore at Island Music Club. This is tricky, on one hand  Declan O Rourke, writer of my favourite 21st century song ever brought his Mag Pai Zai tour to Glór but after some deliberation my prize goes to Thom Moore after his charming gig at Minogues, Tulla as a guest of the Island Music Club when we were reminded of how many hit songs he wrote for other performers.


Best Blues   Johnny Fean House Shakers Blues. 
Well ok.  I didn't hear very much blues and I am not  particularly a  fan but I enjoyed this gig at Shannon . In fact I heard Fean twice in 2011, the second gig with bass player Stephen Travers. If anyone could make a case for the Blues, Johnny Fean could. Catch him at his Limerick gigs

Johnny Fean

Best Trad Gig Zoe Conway John McIntyre at SMB Folk Club
A pleasure to hear unamplified music of any genre but Zoe and John McIntyre were charming at the Courthouse as guests of the Sixmilebridge Folk Club. Superb violin technique and charming songs and a mix of genres with sympathetic guitar accompaniment. An accoustic delight.

Zoe Conway, John Mc

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Best Ensemble: Cornets by candlelight  Ennis Brass Band
Vladimir Jablokov brought his quintet to Glor as part of the Classical Twist tour and was my favourite small ensemble of the year
There is something thrilling about the sound of brass instruments en masse and the Ennis Brass Band are a super enesemble.  Even if they were only half as good they would still be my pick. I admire very much their sense of civic duty and they remain an honest to goodness marching band getting out in all weathers to cheer  Ennis folk. Listen back to the post concert interview with PRO Darragh McAllister in my report. I was very proud to be a guest performer at their 40 th celebration concert. Long may they prosper.

Best solo artist Peggy Seeger  
Peegy Seeger , a living legend was simply extraordinary at the Courthouse as a guest of Sixmilebridge Folk Club. Witty, charming and playing a fascinating collection of instruments.

Spirit of Horslips blows away holiday blues

Fean & Travers

Playlist below


       'Curiously, the musical world of the Seventies seems a whole lot closer than and certainly more acceptable  -be it as kitsch or cred-than it did in  the Eighties.  Album covers like the works of art that sleevd Hapy to Meet and Sorry to Part and The Book of Invasions solidified the notion that here were people with a vision, people who cared about what they did- daft outfits not withstanding' . Irish Folk Trad & Blues Colin Harper, 2004


 Horslips occupied an unusual place in my musical conscience, familiar more  from retrospective awareness but also just hovering at the edge of my teenage musical experience. I have a dim and distant memory of hearing them at the Savoy Theatre, Waterford  (now a bookshop) in the late seventies. While they made a distinct impression,  I wish I could say I recognized them then as the legendary epoch making artists they subsequently became but I was a New Seekeers kind of gal with my taste more pop orientated  than towards the progressive rock offerings from the aclaimed trailblazing celtic rock supremos.

Horslips

Of the original line up, while most  pursued alternative careers, guitar player and  lead vocalist Johnny Fean has been gigging with  various  line ups since the band split up in 1980. I heard him earlier this year with the House Shakers Blues Band  at a terrific gig in the Shannon Knights Club in Shannon and was looking forward to hearing him at The Highway Bar, Crusheen  with bass player Stephen Travers  best known for his work with The Miami Show Band. The guitar duo with Kossovan drummer Blendi Krasniqi played an extensive set of hits from Happy to Meet and Sorry to Part  and The Book of Invasions with some  numbers from the Zen Alligators catalogue, grass root blues and  some trad tunes on mandolin.  Travers  added bodhran rhythms on low bass ensuring this was trad unlike anything you might  hear in the Irish music  heartland of Clare.

Vocally Johnny sounded a little strained,  but  the lyrics were familiar and the vocals were interludes between extended guitar improvisations rather than the other way round and it was his ace guitar playing we had come to hear.  Opening with the anthem  Power and the Glory from the much lauded  album, The Book of Invasions  he slowed things down with a most unusual electric  guitar take on the beautiful slow air My Lagan Love. Stephen Travers  on bass guitar was an excellent foil to the manoeuvres on lead guitar and the walking bass on Got My  Mojo Working firmly   established the sense of ensemble between the two artists, both seeming to relish the collaboration. By the time he got to 'Further on up the Road' , Johnny was in the zone.

The Highway Bar is quite an intimate venue for an electric rock gig but there was a sense that the punters were fans  and enjoyed the  intimate setting more used to  accoustic gigs.  The audience was a mix of  50 somethings with more concrete memories of Horslips gigs than mine and some younger music fans coming to the music retrospectively. For once the cries of ‘Legend’ from the younger members seemed appropriate.