Latest news with #Lemoncello
Irish Examiner
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Five For Your Radar: Cork Roots Fest, Wolf Alice, Schull films
Festival: Cork Roots Festival Coughlan's, Friday-Monday, May 16-19 A whole host of great acts, new, up-and-coming, and long established, take to the stage at Coughlan's this weekend for Cork Roots Festival. John Blek and Scullion are already sold out, but the likes of Dublin-based duo Lemoncello, regular visitor to these shores James Yorkston, and local legend Ricky Lynch also appear over the weekend. Make sure to get to the venue early to get a good seat. Lemoncello play Coughlan's as part of Cork Roots Festival 2025. Books: International Literature Festival Dublin Merrion Square Park, Dublin, Friday, May 16 to Sunday, May 25 There are any number of highlights at ILF Dublin 2025. Stuart Murdoch (Friday) of Belle and Sebastian is one of the big names. He'll be playing some of the band's classic hits and talking fiction (his debut novel Nobody's Empire came out last year) and songwriting. Shon Faye (Sunday) discusses Love in Exile, a powerful and deeply moving exploration of love, exclusion, and identity. On Monday environmental storyteller Colin Butfield, long-time collaborator of David Attenborough, shares the story behind Ocean: How to Save Earth's Last Wilderness. Art: Sanctum The Vaults at Lavit Gallery, Cork, until May 31 Artist Orla O'Byrne. Cork artist Orla O'Byrne is currently overseeing a conservation project of a large collection of historical plaster models at St Fin Barre's Cathedral in her native city. This exhibition involves photographic work, drawing and installation that were created in response to the project. Concerts: Wolf Alice Cyprus Avenue, Tuesday, May 20 English rock band Wolf Alice haven't played shows since 2022 but after the release of new single Bloom Baby Bloom on Thursday, they have three Irish shows lined up early next week. They play Kilkenny's Set Theatre on May 19, Cyprus Avenue on May 20, and Limerick's Dolans Warehouse on May 21 — tickets were only available via the band's mailing list. They play Glastonbury next month. Cinema: Fastnet Film Festival Schull, Co Cork, Wednesday-Sunday, May 21-25 Domhnall Gleeson, Barry Keoghan, Nicola Coughlan, and Bill Pullman will all be in conversation across the week at the Fastnet Film Festival. There's a special panel on RTÉ crime show Kin with Aidan Gillen, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Clare Dunne, and co-creator Peter McKenna, while In the Opinion of the Censor, directed by Andrew Gallimore, gets its world premiere. That's alongside masterclasses, short film screenings and lots more.
Irish Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Cormac Begley in Vicar Street review: milestone performance from concertina master
Cormac Begley Vicar Street, Dublin ★★★★☆ West Kerry has yielded more than its share of fine musicians and influenced many others far beyond its bounds. Its riotous polkas and slides have so often been sent skywards by box players whose formative years were spent propelling set dancers across dance floors from Ballyferriter to Ballydavid. Cormac Begley has chosen the concertina as his instrument and digs deep into the well of the tradition, mining new depths and scaling innumerable heights along his picaresque way. Lemoncello support with equal parts apprehension and delight. Laura Quirke on lead guitar and vocals brings an unhurried, quietly confident tone to their short set of original songs, with Claire Kinsella on cello and vocals adding judicious and spacious colours to Dopamine, the product of Quirke's attempt at writing possibly 'the worst song ever written'. It's a cool-headed, often ironic take on the tsunami of social media that defines these times, and a fine calling card for a duo who pepper each of their songs with insightful observations on life's incidental moments. READ MORE Cormac Begley's performance took flight against a backdrop of carefully chosen visuals, with the concertina itself the recurring image, amplifying the visual aesthetic of this diminutive instrument that in his hands transmogrifies into a gargantuan, muscular propulsive force. From the outset he lets the concertina bellows breathe deep and free, the lungs offering not only their notes but their breathy silence on O'Neill's Cavalcade, referencing the Battle of Kinsale in 1601. The concertina reaches deep into the heart of the tune, every turn in the tune amplified by Begley's expressive shoulders moving in concert with the notes. The trademark Begley wit is undeniable and threaded throughout his performance. Drawing deep from the family well, he references his colourful ancestry, revelling in their innate rebelliousness and in his own inheritance of the family gene. The gifts of his bilingualism are woven seamlessly into the mix, with punning plays on his name, his lineage and his mischievousness. Cormac's mastery of not only the treble and piccolo concertinas, but the robust bass and baritone ones too, imbues his tune sets with a remarkable spectrum of colour, with left and right hands bringing a strapping percussive force to the mix. The addition of a foot-controlled harmonium is a smart addition of a simple drone, bringing further heft to his sound palette. His special guest, sean-nós dancer Stephanie Keane, is an able compadre, matching Begley's raw energy with her equally unfettered yet precision-engineered rhythms that find humour and grace within the notes. Later, Breanndán Begley, Cormac's father, joins him on accordion for a gorgeously delicate take on Beauty Deas An Oileáin. Fiddle player Liam O'Connor magnifies the boldness of the music even further with a set of tunes opened by Ryan's Rant, a nod to the late, extraordinary fiddle player Tommie Potts, allowing us a sneak preview of the pair's forthcoming album, which promises more feral music that traces a clear thread back to its roots, but with its sights firmly set on the future. Cormac Begley's musicianship is akin to Flann O'Brien's policeman whose molecules had merged with his bicycle. At times, it was difficult to recognise the boundaries between musician and concertina, so fluid, freewheeling and unerring were the tunes. This performance was yet another milestone in Begley's musical journey, filled with hairpin bends and delirious adventures.
