The Front Row: something for everyone: cultural treats in Kilkenny

Built on both banks of the River Nore, the Marble City of Kilkenny is one of Ireland’s largest urban centres, with a population of some 27,000. That number will temporarily grow during August when the Kilkenny Arts Festival takes place over 10 days.

Now established for half a century, this year’s event promises to be one of the best ever.

While you are there, be sure to make the most of your trip to the south-east as Kilkenny is a great tourist destination.

Historic buildings such as Kilkenny Castle, St Canice’s Cathedral and Round Tower, Rothe House, Shee Alms House, Black Abbey, St Mary’s Cathedral, The Tholsel, St Francis Abbey, Grace’s Castle, and St John’s Priory are among the gems worth checking out.

Additionally, the city is known for its craft and design workshops, the Watergate Theatre, public gardens and its museums.

One of the significant attractions for many years now is the Kilkenny Arts Festival, and this year’s programme is packed with premieres, new ideas and returning performers.

Mixing new works in some of the oldest and most iconic spaces in the city, Kilkenny Arts Festival 2024 is rich with variety, and it will be impossible not to find something to entertain all ages and tastes.

From free light shows to serious works of theatre, Kilkenny Arts Festival will take you on an artistic and cultural ride, and Olga Barry and her team have assembled a myriad of talent to thrill.

Trying to pick some highlights is akin to being asked to name your favourite family members, but I will take a stab at doing so.

Modern opera

Mark O’Halloran is one of Ireland’s greatest writers and playwrights, and two of his accomplished works are Mary Motorhead and Trade, two very different pieces about damaged but compelling characters.

Mark’s niece, experimental composer Emma O’Halloran, has adapted both plays and produced an operatic masterpiece. These works premiered last year in America and were met with great critical acclaim.

Now, thanks to the Irish National Opera and the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Trade/Mary Motorhead receives its European premiere with four performances that will surely be sell-outs.

Under the beady eye of director Tom Creed, this combination of dramatic text with a live orchestral score and electronic sounds sets out to redefine what opera can be. The Watergate Theatre will play host to these four performances.

Installation

“This is an important work, blending activism and artistry, and I hope many other audiences have the opportunity to experience it.” So said one of the reviews about A Mother’s Voice, an installation that will have visitors to Shee Alms House profoundly moved. There are three performances daily over two days.

A Mother’s Voice is dedicated to, and inspired by, the women affected by the mother and baby home scandal, and is a collaboration that gives a voice to these women.

Audiences will enter the space where the performance takes place by way of an immersive art installation, and then they will encounter a live concert which is accompanied by animation.

The acutely moving performance features the voices of survivors, and pays tribute to their resilience and strength.

Music lovers

With appearances from Lisa O’Neill, Mick Flannery, Cormac Begley and a host of visiting performers, music lovers are in for a real treat. St Canice’s Cathedral will host a raucous celebration of all that is good about the Kilkenny Arts Festival when it puts on a two-hour show of some of the best Irish talent about.

The Festival Finale event is headlined by Martin Hayes, and he has gathered together a collection of friends who will see out the 10 days of musical innovation, collaboration and connection with a toe-tapping session.

Joining Hayes will be guitarist John Doyle, cellist Kate Ellis, fiddler Liz Knowles, accordion player Mick McAuley and many more.

The Kilkenny Arts Festival runs from 8 August to 18 August. Full programme can be viewed on kilkennyarts.ie

On the literary front, I am torn between two poets who will headline acts during the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

Paul Muldoon needs no introduction, and not only is he generally acknowledged as one of Ireland’s greatest living poets, but none other than The New York Times Book Review acclaimed him to be “one of the great poets of the past hundred years”.

Muldoon has two different performances, both worth checking out.

If I had to attend just one event, I have settled on that featuring Martina Evans, in association with Poetry Ireland. She will explore her work in conversation with Olivia O’Leary, and what a body of work she has compiled over some three decades.

She has published 12 books of poetry and prose, and won many awards. Many feel that her most recent volumes are her best, and in 2022 her collection American Mules won the Pigott Prize.

That was followed last year by The Coming Thing, and this Times Literary Supplement and The Irish Times Book of the Year is a brilliant, long narrative poem.

Among Evans’s many fans is Colm Tóibín. Imelda, the book’s central character, is immersed in challenging new worlds where old customs still survive. It is the 1980s and the poem takes shape among punks in Cork city.