Beara Historical society and Castletownbere Development Association Talk
Date and Time: Tuesday August 19th 4pm
Canon Paul Willoughby will give a short history of the church of Ireland in West Cork
Free Admission
Canon Paul Willoughby will give a short history of the church of Ireland in West Cork
Free Admission
A romp through the untold myths of the Celts with astounding Irish storyteller, Clare Murphy. These are not your regular myths. Expect wicked tales of badass deities, feral fighters, unorthodox sex, hairy bodies, mastery, and goddess-on-goddess battles.
Experience Clare effortlessly exhume the Celtic canon and bring the wild women who never made the cut, into the light. Not for the faint-hearted. Definitely for grown-ups.
“Clare is an astounding storyteller.” - Blindboy
“Masterly storytelling!“ - Culture Whisper
Read more: Clare Murphy Storyteller 'The Spanking Goddess and Other Discarded Tales'
Cónal Creedon is an award winning novelist, playwright and documentary filmmaker. In recent news…
The World Cultural Council in Switzerland announced Cónal Creedon winner of The World Cultural Council Arts Award. He will receive:
The Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts 2024
At McGill University Montreal, Canada
The jury of this prestigious award were impressed by the diversity of Cónal’s creative practice, described as an exploration of the spaghetti bowl of streets in downtown Cork city, Ireland – where his family has lived and traded for over a hundred years.
Read more: Conal Creedon 'Come West With The Road With Me' Reading
Date and Time: Sat May 3rd 2025, Doors 7.30pm
Celebrated cellist and composer Ilse de Ziah will present a special live show called "Transcendence" on May 3rd. She will share music from her albums "Transcendence," "Here & There," and her award-winning Irish music film "Living the Tradition." Her much-loved repertoire from her YouTube channel will also be featured. Inspired by nature, history, travel and her explorations of consciousness, her compositions span Irish, world music, film scores, and folk music with passion and classical virtuosity.
“Ask the singers with whom Jim White has played during the last 30 years - Cat Power or Nick Cave, PJ Harvey or Bill Callahan - and they might agree no one else makes that battered snare (or, really, the drums) sound quite like White.” - The New York Times
The collaboration between renowned drummer Jim White and acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson is a natural union of two of the most intuitive players and listeners working in music. White and Anderson are each very in-demand as collaborators in no small part because of their mastery, versatility and highly expressive playing. The duo have each amassed an impressive body of work, and remain at the vanguard of their practices due to an insatiable curiosity and delight in exploration of new avenues of expression. Their 2020 debut The Quickening exemplified that daring spirit as an exercise in trust: two musicians who had never performed together before committing those first moments in time to record. 2024’s Swallowtail is a deepening of that trust, White and Anderson completely immersed in the moment, each attuned to the other fluidly moving as wind and water.
Harpist Tara Viscardi and flautist Robert Harvey continue their Beara album launch Irish and UK tour. The project pairs contemporary, original compositions inspired by the Beara Peninsula in the South West of Ireland, with tunes collected and written on the peninsula since the 18th century. It also draws inspiration from Princess Beara, the Spanish Princess who it is said married Owen Mór, King of Ireland, around 120 AD and who gave the area its name.
We are delighted to welcome Hot House Flowers frontman Liam Ó Maonlaí to Sarah Walker Gallery on Wednesday 14th of August.
Tickets are €32 and available here.
RNLI: 200 Years of Saving Lives at Sea. A free public concert featuring renowned Spanish harpist and singer Pilar Paradela at The Sarah Walker Gallery, Castletownbere on Saturday 10th August at 7.30 pm. This event is generously sponsored by the Spanish Embassy in Ireland. Doors open at 7.00 p.m.
Read more: RNLI: 200 Years of Saving Lives at Sea - Free Public Concert
We are so happy to be welcoming Maria Doyle Kennedy back this summer!
Tickets are €32 and available to buy here.
Violet Gibson; The Woman Who Shot Mussolini
Written and performed by Alice Barry
Approx 1hr 10mins
Date and Time: Sunday June 30th 12.30pm
Sarah Walker Gallery is delighted to welcome The OCM Academy Quartet, Filippo Ghidoni, Filippo Pedrotti [violins], Clara Costa [viola], Stefano Beltrami [cello], on June 30th as part of West Cork Chamber Music Festival Fringe.
De Ziah & Date take a Cello and Guitar on a new journey!
De Ziah and Date deliver a spellbinding musical performance with Ilse de Ziah, cello and Ian Date, guitar. Beautiful renderings of melodies interwoven with captivating improvisations. The duo have an original take on musical styles from around the world creating a deeply emotional journey for the listener. Moments of great musical beauty and a deep love of music and its traditions makes seeing and hearing them live a moving and transformative experience. They will include music from their new debut album Here & There.
This is the show you want to catch!
Songs by the Choir, Readings, and Instrumental Pieces by Sarah Groser (viola de gamba), Patrick Goyvaerts (guitar) and other local musicians
ENTRY FREE
retiring collection in aid of a local charity
Christine Tobin vocals, Phil Robson guitar & Neil O’ Loclainn double bass.
Christine celebrates spring with uplifting songs from Brazil to Ireland and lots of places in between. Alongside gems from the Brazilian songbook by Elìs Regina, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Milton Nascimento, you’ll hear Tobin originals, songs by John Prine, Carole King, Willie Nelson and more, all sung in her unique style.
https://on.soundcloud.com/dWF6C
https://youtu.be/0tMNfi-DGss?si=Ms5b9Ee4KMNXalmw
Read more: Christine Tobin with Phil Robson & Neil O'Lochlainn
A talk on climate change and sustainability organised by a group of 6th year students from Beara Community School.
Read more: Generation Glas Talk on Climate Change & Sustainability
SOLD OUT
Maria Doyle Kennedy
Polymath Maria Doyle Kennedy has sustained a varied and eclectic career in the Arts for more than 3 decades .
If the River is Hidden
A poetry performance by Cherry Smyth & Craig Jordan-Baker
With Niamh Varian-Barry on violin
Christine Tobin, 'A Thousand Kisses Deep' (new arrangements of Leonard Cohen and other great songs) with Phil Robson.
A Thousand Kisses Deep is a beautiful re-working of Leonard Cohen songs alongside some choice originals and other favourites. In her own writing, Christine Tobin specializes in idiosyncratic, highly musical poetic vignettes with a strong sense of story, so it's no surprise that she weaves magic with the profound, sensual songs of Cohen, and in her musical settings of WB Yeats and contemporary Irish poet Paul Muldoon. S|he has chosen the Cohen songs from his early 1960s albums through to his 2001 release ‘Ten New Songs’. The live show of ‘A Thousand Kisses Deep’ won a prestigious Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe and the album received rave reviews. (see below)
Playing together since 2020 Aradia are delighted to be returning to West Cork Chamber Music Festival for the second year in a row. They were the 2022 fellowship quartet at Concorda Chamber Music Course.
10am – 12 noon Philip Gross poetry workshop €20
5pm Poets meet Politics Poetry Competition Anthology Launch
8pm Readings by Philip Gross & Angela Gardner followed by Open Mic
We are delighted to welcome Philip Gross, judge of this year’s Poets meet Politics competition to the event. Philip is a winner of the TS Eliot prize among many other awards, and is Professor of Poetry at the University of S. Wales.
Renga led by Philip Gross-"Philip will introduce and lead a renga session, the gentlest way of poets weaving words together. No specialist knowledge needed, just a willingness to come with eyes and ears open, to relax and trust what this refreshing process gives us.”
Alice Barry of Noggin Theater Company will perform her one-woman show Fruitcake at Sarah Walker Gallery on August 4th. Noggin Theatre Company has toured nationally and internationally and Sarah Walker Gallery is delighted to host her and what promises to be a brilliant show. Alice is quick to point out that although the piece is titled ‘Fruitcake’ and the premise is that of a woman coming to give a cookery demonstration the production is equally loved by men and women aged thirteen and over as it tells the story of growing up on an Irish country farm. It is a dark yet funny tale involving hardship, murder and intrigue but most of all great sacrifice, realisation and love.
Sarah Walker Gallery is delighted to host The Allora Quartet performing as part of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival.
Formed in 2020, the Allora Quartet is made up of four exciting young musicians from Cork; Megan Chan and Michelle McCarthy on violins, Stephen Kelleher on viola and Michael Murphy on Cello.
A live performance installation by Alastair Maclennan and Sandra Corrigan Breathnach
‘Sentient’ is a collaborative performance / installation between artists Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Corrigan Breathnach. This performance / installation combines live performance, sound, performative drawing and sculptural elements, which seek to encapsulate a shared energy through interaction and mark making. This piece will focus on awareness that we are only one of many species of sentient beings, all with an ephemeral nature, living in cyclical existence. Carbon, a fundamental building block of life expressed in the form of charcoal, together with salt, opens connotations of protection and will transform, naturally, a new emerging narrative, opening, releasing and creating further fusions, allowing forms and perceptions to alter… and as the performance unfolds it will echo transitions in nature, moving from darkness into light.
Love, Marraige, Death, Dating and Daring to try again. A new play written and performed by Alice Barry, Noggin Theatre Company, and directed by Jason Byrne.
Sarah Walker Gallery would be delighted if you were able to attend the launch of two new poetry collections:
road to the home place, an anthology of poems and images by Hungry Hill Writers and No Country a collection of poetry by Jennifer Russell.
Music, poetry, wine and talk on a November evening. What could be better in a big open well-ventilated space?
We are very privileged to host Pat Coldrick Classical Guitarist once again after his recent sell out show at The National Concert Hall in Dublin. Pat is an Irish Classical Guitarist and Composer, who has been working for the last six years in Ireland but has also performed Recitals in Europe, the USA and Russia. Pat has been described as ‘pushing the boundaries of classical guitar’ with his musical interpretations and compositions and has made Classical Guitar exciting, interesting and more accessible to music lovers in general. Through his interpretation of music and by exploring and embracing new technologies he strives to enhance the dynamics of the classical guitar and bring his music to a wider audience both at home and abroad.
“THE WHISTLING GIRL”
The acclaimed Irish duo of singer/actress Honor Heffernan ( Louis Stewart, Neil Jordan’s “Angel”), and composer/keyboard player Trevor Knight (Auto da Fé) present their Cabaret/Speakeasy-style show, “The Whistling Girl”, creating a spellbinding alternative musical extravaganza of song and spoken word based on the lyrics of American wit and feminist icon Dorothy Parker. The original and unique music composed by Trevor transforms the poems of Parker into songs, using her witty, droll and sometimes heart rending lyrics.
The Vespertine Quintet, known for their sparse, atmospheric music incorporating strings, piano and field recordings, are delighted to be collaborating with Adrian Crowley on a special performance for Beara Arts Festival 2019. The Vespertine Quintet began in 2014 as a way to get through a particularly dark West Cork winter, hosting house concerts and playing the lush, ethereal music of Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and Estonian Arvo Pärt.
Kieran Goss and Annie Kinsella return to The High Tide Club with songs from their debut duo album ‘Oh, The Starlings'…... songs, stories and harmonies that transport the listener to another world, this is music from the heart, for the heart… A show to make you laugh and cry… A show to move you with its honest beauty… A show not to be missed.
Greenshine are a Cork-based family trio comprised of Noel Shine, Mary Greene, and their daughter Ellie Shine. Their music draws influences from contemporary, folk and roots, and is characterised by fast picking and close, warm harmonies.