The Friday View 03/05
The City Council is closing streets to open them, an umbrella finds its way to the Michael Collins museum and Tanora is the drink that keep that keeps on giving. Welcome to the Friday View.
After two big announcements a few weeks ago, the full lineup for this year’s Cork Midsummer Festival was announced yesterday. Running between the June 12-23, the rarely disappointing festival features a mix of visual art, performance art, theatre and music, in theatres, on the street and on the airwaves.
The festival regularly features some widely praised and respected artists - last year’s highlights included ‘Sun & Sea’, a beach opera in City Hall that was the winner of the Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, and Stephanie Lüning's 'Island of Foam', which saw colourful foam flow down John Redmond Street. The year before, Saint Colman’s Cathedral in Cobh hosted the Gaia Globe.
This year’s highlights include The Cork Proms, three live performances celebrating contemporary and classical music alongside the Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra, including Irish rock, Dvořák’s New World Symphony, and hits from Broadway and the West End. Theatre highlights include Good Sex, a play by theatre group Dead Centre with Emilie Pine, which talks about how you can have sex on stage. Tempesta, a play by Deirdre Kinahan with a live score by Steve Wickham, is presented at The Pav, and tells the story of two Dubliners caught up in the onslaught of war in 1930s Europe. The Triskel hosts electronic music with 9.57 (Sunset) over two weekends. Curated by Ellll, it features live performance, electronic music, and late-night DJs celebrating the summer solstice.
The solstice is also a theme of a radio station created for the duration of the festival. Radio Solstice is a pop-up community radio station, ran by local artist Elinor O’Donovan, local DJ John Bosteels, and local musician Caoilian Sherlock, featuring a diverse programme of music, conversation, and audio theatre, which, according to the programme, “is an ear to the Otherworld, receiving sounds from the ‘thin places’ where our world connects most closely with the world of dreams, the afterlife and the unseen.”
As with every year, there will be free performances for the public, either in the street or indoors. This year, Millenium Hall hosts Tino Sehgal’s This youiiyou, a live installation, just like Sun & Sea, that involves volunteering members of the public, in this case children and their parents. The installation pays tribute to the bonds of care and love between generations. Other public performance art includes a Midsummer Parade by Cork Community Art Link and Ief Spincemaille’s Travelling Rope, an oversized rope that appears in surprise locations that members of the public are invited to move and hold.
As always, the Midsummer Festival nurtures young local talent, particularly with the Tales of Two Cities programme, done in collaboration with Mayk in Bristol. We interviewed three participants last year, and they have gone on to begin successful theatre careers. This year’s young artists selected to go to Bristol are Orla Devlin, Kyle English and Kate Mitchell. Elsewhere, theatre-makers Hanan Sheedy, Gill Byrne and Ray Scannell were selected to show their Works in Progress performances, and develop their craft with the support of the festival.
The Cork Midsummer Festival is an important part of the city’s arts calendar - it brings visual and performance art to those who don’t usually seek it, it helps develop young local talent, and it brings renowned work to our relatively small city. Long may it continue.
-KMC
News in brief
Cork hurlers lose to Clare: It was a day to forget for Cork at Páirc Uí Chaoimh last Sunday. Fans in the City and Blackpool terraces witnessed a solid Cork comeback in the second half, but despite that, Eoghan Cormican stated in the Examiner that Cork’s championship hopes “are on life support.” We may be looking at another year added to the drought.
Close the streets, or open them: Beginning Sunday, May 19 Cork City Council is trialing an “Open Streets” initiative which will run once a month during the summer months in which people will be encouraged to come to town by public transport, walking or bike and enjoy the street party. Now a cynic might say, don’t rely on the bus showing up, and they’d be right, and, well weekends, especially Sundays are the easy option, but the Open Streets is a worthwhile experiment nonetheless. Percussion band Boom Boom will be doing their thing for the first takeover on May 19 on Cornmarket Street, North Main Street and St. Patrick’s Street.
Just to note, the quays and all car parks will be open to traffic as normal and street closures will be applied to St. Patrick Street, North Main Street, Cornmarket Street, Castle Street and Adelaide Street from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Buses and taxis will be able to access St. Patrick Street as normal. Access for blue badge holders will also be facilitated as normal.
The schedule for the rest of the summer is:
Sunday June 16: Cork Midsummer Festival Parade on Oliver Plunkett Street along with a performance form street art group Kamchatka
Saturday August 24:North Main Street Carnival
Sunday September 1: Autumnfest - Douglas Street
Friday September 20: Culture Night – Cornmarket Street and North Main Street
Original 7 Launch Tanora Flavoured Ale: A new summer drink will be available across the county from this weekend on. Original 7, a microbrewery based in the Franciscan Well, have launched a new Tanora Pale Ale. Rather than being infused with Tanora, the beer uses magnum, ozacca, mosaic, mandarina bavaria and simcoe flavourings to emulate the taste of tangerine. The drink is available in the Franciscan Well, Fred Zeppelin’s and Coughlan’s. Let’s hope the drink goes down easier than the promo ad from Original 7.
Micheal Collins was just like us: This week the Michael Collins House Museum in Clonakilty received an umbrella that the ‘Big Man’ reportedly used while based in Dublin. The story goes that umbrella was left behind following one of his visits to Devlin’s Pub on Parnell Street in the capital and has since been safeguarded by the Devlin family. They in turn have now handed it over to Clonakilty museum on a long term loan. According to the press release it’s a silk mechanical umbrella, tightly wound and held in a telescopic faux wood cover that doubles as a walking cane. Michael Collins House Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday.
New supermarket and apartments to be built in Carrigtwohill: Planning has been approved for a large, mixed-use development in Carrigtwohill. Located just off the south side of the Main Street, the development includes a new supermarket, retail units, offices and 43 apartments. Carrigtwohill has a diverse range of supermarkets, including Aldi, Centra and Mace, 2 medium sized Polish supermarkets, and an afro-caribbean grocery store.
Gateway Bar to Reopen: The oldest bar in Cork city is set to reopen under its original name. The Gateway on Barrack Street, known for a period as BarBarElla, will be another addition to the diverse mix of pubs on Barrack Street, which includes Tom Barry’s, Mr. Bradley’s and O’Sho. The bar has been taken over by Ernest Horgan, owner of the successful Leaping Salmon in Blackrock and Southern Star in Turner’s Cross.
Out + About
Cork Flower Studio hosts the first of the Flower Shop Sessions on Douglas Street on Friday evening. Taking place in the parklet outside the shop, the music sessions take place every Friday of this month, and are a welcome and open space for all musicians of any age.
Time, date, place: 5pm, Every Friday in May, Cork Flower Studio, Douglas Street, Cork.
The Ballydehob Jazz Festival is in full swing, having started last night and running through the bank holiday weekend. US folk, jazz and blues singer Stephanie Nilles takes the stage tonight. Meanwhile, the festival highlight, The Bootleggers Ball, takes place at the Festival Hall on Saturday and Sunday nights and is headlined by the Canibal Dandies, a vintage jazz and gypsy swing band from Montpellier in France, joined by Celeste Amapola and Melanie Casabone. Performance art comes in the form of Pirate Taxi on Saturday and Sunday, an outdoor circus show based around a set built out of a London taxi, and The World Famous Ballydehob New Orleans Jazz Parade on Sunday, which does exactly as it says on the tin. More information and tickets available at this website.
Time, date, place: Thursday May 2-Monday May 6, Ballydehob.
This weekend is your last chance to see Fallen, an exhibition by Amna Walayat at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh. Walayat is a Pakistani-born artist based in Cork, with a practice expressing her hybrid cultural experiences. She reflects on issues of diaspora, gender, trauma, and sexuality, as well as how femininity affects values, norms, and beliefs. The exhibition ends Saturday and is well worth a look.
Time, date, place: Ends 4pm, Saturday May 4, Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh.
The Sunday Times returns for the bank holiday weekend with a session in Aye to open the summer. Featuring local DJs as usual, an open roof, and some (hopefully) blue skies, the festivities run from 4pm until close. There are probably very few better ways to start out your summer.
Time, date, place: 4pm, Sunday May 5, Aye, Anglesea Street, Cork.
Laurie Shaw will present some of his songs at Plugd tonight with Felted Fruit Is Fermenting, featuring songs from his five Felted Fruit EPs. Originally from the Wirral Peninsula in North West England, Shaw is one of Cork’s most prolific and talented songwriters. He is well worth checking out, and tickets are available here.
Time, date, place: 8pm, Saturday May 4, Plugd, Cornmarket Street, Cork.
The Laneway Gallery in Shandon present a new exhibition for the month of May by artist Billy Dante. Good Night? G’Luck is a series of paintings that captures intimate moments from a city at night, like cigarette butts, refuse bags, crushed cans. It runs until May 25, more information here.
Time, date, place: Saturday May 4-Saturday May 25, Laneway Gallery, Shandon Street, Cork.
That’s it for this week’s Friday View.
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