'Come The Sails' - Launch of Tall Ships Waterford Festival - A view from the Plaza

Niall Crowley conducts the massed choir and orchestra at Tall Ships Opening Ceremony



Urbs Intacta Manet Waterfordia

 Lend us your sails, your stories too,
Taller than skytails in the blue,
Stowaways to the future
Lend Us Your Sails.

Tall Ship Waterford 2011

The Tall Ships Festival was officially launched on Thursday afternoon  in Waterford with a world premiere of a specially commisssioned cantata for choir and orchestra as the focal point of the opening festivities. The work commissioned by the Waterford Choirs Association features rich settings by five composers  of  poems by five  poets, all  with strong Waterford connections with the recounting of the city's maritime history a common theme. I love the pithy  narrated interludes by Michael Coady set by Marion Ingoldsby.  Even the titles hinted at the richness of the lines. Eric Sweeney's  semiquaver rhythms of A Prosperous Port contrasted with the more stately metre of Greg Scanlon's settting of Calico Dress sung by mezzo soprano, Bridget Knowles. There was a rousing anthem, Come The Sails to finish with a setting of words by John Ennis in a setting by my contemporary Sue Furlong well known in liturgical  composition and choral circles. It was good to see young poet Megan Nolan included in a setting of her poem, Child of Mine by Ben Hanlon,  known throughout the land for his work with De La Salle Choir.

The choir clad in colour coded tee shirts and orchestra met for a final rehearsal before adjourning to the courtyard of Christchurch Cathedral where mountains of sandwiches were consumed and tea drunk before we returned fortified to the splendid William Vincent Wallace Plaza with fingers firmly crossed for fair weather.  Enda duly arrived accompanied by his entourage and Derek Mooney bounded on to the stage to crack open the champagne , so to speak, on the procedings.




Crowd at the Plaza, Waterford



My spot in front of three tenors

 There was an anxious moment when a technical problem with the microphone forced a restart but conductor Niall Crowley calmly waited for the nod and on the second go the 200 strong choir and 40 strong orchestra were off. There was the menace of rain threatening to spoil the party but it mercifully didn't spill.

 Contemporary  music by Irish composers does not often receive such a large audience for premieres.  Afficionados I spoke to praised the innovative work  drawing on Waterford's rich history and maritime heritage and it is good to see the city further cementing its reputation as a hot spot for new music. (See my report on  Waterford New Music Week).  Huge credit is due, I understand, to Niall Crowley of the Waterford  Choirs Association? producer Joan Dalton and the Waterford City Council for bringing   this project from a good idea on paper to an actual performance. For myself, it is  many years since I performed with an orchestra in Waterford and it was thrilling and a privilege   to take an active part  in this gala day in my home city.

Déise Abú!
'Magnificence of rigging above a mile of quay' Mark Roper

Urbs Intacta  Manet









Thursday 30th June 2011

Michael Nyman at Waterford New Music Week




Nyman Band

    

Michael Nyman at Waterford New Music Week 2011

There was a bit of a buzz around the appearance of film composer, Michael Nyman at Waterford New Music Week, with the composer himself interviewed on RTE’s flagship arts magazine programme, Arena in the week of the festival.  So with my diary clear, daylight hours getting longer and the prospect of a sunny weekend ahead, I headed South East from the Banner County.

Nyman is lauded as one of  Britain’s most innovative and celebrated composers, with numerous film soundtracks and opera scores to his credit.  His work can elicit strong reactions and  as I write, twitter updates  report 'loud booing  for Nyman's bouncy gleeful score'  at Maerzmusik, Berlin. The long queue at the Good Shepherd Chapel on the WIT campus boded well and I made my way to the top to the ticket desk just as the doors opened and carried on to sit in the front row to get a good view of this ‘fascinating and influential cultural icon’.

Gadding about at Waterford Writers' Weekend March 2011







Sean Dunne



Following fast on the heels of the Ennis literary event , I find myself at another  wordy weekend, this time in my childhood home city of Waterford, the event rebranded as the Waterford Writer's Weekend after several years under the name of the late Waterford writer, Sean Dunne.  The sun is shining in Waterford on Friday and the town is busy with lots of people milling around. The bookies are doing a roaring trade on  the final day of Cheltenham . 



Thomas McCarthy



 A good crowd, including Mayor Mary Roche wearing her chain of office, is gathered at the Central Library for the opening event where Thomas McCarthy reads from his several  collections interspersed with some reminiscences of growing up in Cappoquinn.  Whilst this is a pleasant open space, there are some problems with background noise of a busy city centre library  and  traffic noise  is something of a distraction. Both McCarthy and the young poet Leanne O Sullivan have a style more suited to a more intimate venue and it is difficult to hear much particularly of the last speaker.







Downes Pub




Reading at the Writers' Evening

 Later, McCarthy is on MC  duty at the rather more intimate Open Mike session in the back room in Downes Pub and this is a more fun in some ways than the afternoon gig.   I like this venue with its dim lights and patterned carpets and most especially, the grand piano that once graced the  living room of my childhood home. I suppress  a soupcon of regret that I left Waterford in my late teens when I might have enjoyed hanging out in Downes which has the distinction of offering an own blend whiskey.  The MC collects names of willing volunteers and assuming it is a poetry reading, I volunteer to add a tune by way of punctuation. As the speakers begin and  it becomes apparent that a variety of forms are being presented , I change my mind and opt to do something I haven't done since I was at school - read my composition, except on this occasion  I read not from a dogeared copy book but from my 21st century ipod which does make it a little difficult to look at my audience. Fintan Power from Tramore Writer's group, Compass, M Foley  Joe Falvey, Linda Gough , Mary Grehan  and McCarthy himself are among the contributers. Among the attendees are Jane Cantwell of Waterford Central Library and Nick Bankes, chairman of Imagine Festival who I am excited to learn is connected to The Ukelele Orchestra which must augur well surely for another Deise appearance by this quirky ensemble. 

On Saturday night I call to the Dunmore Room in the Tower Hotel for Tall Tales and Torch Songs .  There is a pleasant blues band and what a relief it's  not overamplified.  Arts Office Conor Nolan is MC but some of his introductions had me somewhat baffled as to what to expect next. Although tempted to stay, I head over to hear the second half of Ad Hoc Chorale concert at Christchurch Cathedral. It is good to see a very good crowd  in for this local  chamber choir, conducted by Niall Crowley and they work their way through some adventurous contemporary repertoire. I recognise some familiar faces of local music teachers and there is also a large contingent of younger voices.

Sunday is another lovely day in the sunny South East and there is an air of  expectation in the Waterford Central Library as  we wait for former taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald.  Dr Garret spoke about his long career and  the process of writing his biography  and was in very good humour. I find his views on education somewhat refreshing in this era of specialisation . Although the venue is quieter, there is a section of the  audience who can't be seen but can be heard, a feature of this lovely space seeming to amplify young voices  to a greater degree than older ones .



Dr Garrett Fitzgerald



Finally I nip down the road to hear Professor emeritus of NUI Maynooth, Gerard Gillen  playing the Elliot organ at Christchurch Cathedral. Gillen remains my favourite organist and coaxes the widest variety of sounds from the eerie flute like to the grotesque bass pedal notes particularly in the set of variations by Bohm . There was a charming suite by Roccoco composer CPE Bach and some more contemporary fare by Frank Martin and Guilmant . Professor leaned down to introduce his works and was assisted in the organ loft by Eric Sweeney . There was some consternation over sticky keys but c'est la vie.  It is not that long since I enjoyed hearing David Connolly, student of Professor Gillen and it is great  to hear these world class  performers in Waterford on this new organ. The audience for these recitals tends to be small and I think it might have helped if the event was dovetailed with the Sunday morning reading. I think some of Garret's audience might have been persuaded to come down the road following the morning reading.  I think it is a great idea to market a  range of events happening on a give weekend under one banner and this was very successfully done by the Imagine Festival team . I suggest musicians and writers could benefit from   a merging  of  events. Why not offer a  poetry reading with an organ recital . It worked for Liam O Flynn and Seamus Heaney . All in all ,lots to enjoy in the Deise this weekend