Salon Éire
MAY 2016: NEW YORK
Salon Éire 100, an exhilarating and engaging line up of art by contemporary Irish artists, has been created for New York, 2016. All events reflect on and celebrate one hundred years of Irish culture.
May 2016’s program presents a multi-disciplinary body of work by artists in several venues across New York City:
Kim Haughton: Photographer
Aisling O’Mara*: Actress
Conor Linehan*: Composer & Pianist
Clare O’Malley: Actress & Mezzo Soprano
Professor Clair Wills: Poetry Salon Host & Leonard L. Milberg Professor of Irish Letters
Alvy Carragher: Poet, by kind arrangement of Poetry Ireland
Sinéad Morrissey*: Poet & newly announced recipient of 2016 E.M. Forster Award
Fanny Howe*: Irish American Poet
Iarla Ó Lionáird: world renowned Sean-Nós singer from The Gloaming (band)
Nick Laird: Poet
Ciaran Berry: Poet
Danielle McLaughlin*: Author of Dinosaurs On Other Planets
Liz Nugent*: Author of Unravelling Oliver
Richard E. Nash: Literary Salon Host and Publishing Icon
John Kearns: IAWA
Tom Phelan: Author
Geraldine O’Sullivan: Artist
Produced by Alison McKenna in association with the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, the Irish Consulate, the Irish Repertory Theatre Company, IAWA and the American Irish Historical Society.
*Supported by Culture Ireland as part of it’s Centenary Program.
Portrait of a Century
By Kim Haughton
Consulate of Ireland, NYC: 3-20 May 2016
345 Park Avenue, Floor 17 (Btw 51st & 52nd Streets)
New York, NY 10154
“Portrait of a Century” is a reflection of one hundred years of Irish identity, history, culture and achievement through the prism of those who have shaped the nation and those who are a part of it’s future. Photographic portraits have been made of one hundred people who have a connection to Ireland in some significant way, each born in a different year over the past century. These include the faces of artists, writers, leaders, thinkers, musicians and sporting heroes. In 2016, as Ireland reflects on a revolution that gave birth to an Independent state, these images are representations of who we are at a significant moment in time.
Biography
Kim Haughton is an Irish photographer based in New York. She holds an MA in Documentary Photography from University of the Arts, London. During her career, she has covered post-conflict issues in over twenty countries. Her work has appeared in publications worldwide including TIME, Vanity Fair, Der Spiegel and the Financial Times. Her image of horses outside an abandoned house became the iconic representation of Ireland’s economic collapse and was chosen as one of eleven images to to feature in the Guardian’s “History of Europe In Pictures 1945-2011” Her first solo exhibition “In Plain Sight” was shown at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin in 2015.
Rebel Rebel – Anu Productions
Starring Aisling O’Mara
The American Irish Historical Society
991 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
10th May, 2016 | 7pm
Aisling O’Mara created REBEL REBEL with collaborator Robbie O’Connor and director Louise Lowe in association with Anu.
In this performance of Rebel Rebel, actor Aisling O’Mara will perform excerpts of this critically acclaimed production and the performance will be followed by a post-show discussion.
Looking at one of the central figures of the Easter Rising, Helena Molony. She was transformed from a bystander into a crucial participant in Irish history. Radical in her views and thinking, she was a woman ahead of her time. As an actor with the Abbey Theatre, she rehearsed for rebellion, carried out rebellion and suffered the consequences of her participation.
We meet Helena in her dressing room, preparing to go on stage once again as Cathleen in Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houlihan, she summons her demons and the ghosts of that fateful Easter Monday when she took guns from under the Abbey stage and spilled revolution onto the streets.
Director: Louise Lowe
Producer: Leanna Cuttle
Costume Design: Sorcha Ni Fhlionn
Lighting Design: Colm Maher
Sound Design: Ivan Birthistle
Commissioned by RTE as part of their Reflecting the Rising programme.
First produced by ANU in association with Irish Theatre Institute and Dublin Fringe Festival as part of Show in a Bag 2015.
“Artful, complex, and touching…It’s directed with impressive verve and precision and is a total pleasure to watch” SUNDAY INDEPENDENT
“The chaos and bloodshed of the rebellion is recreated with acrobatic movement and atmospheric sound design. A stirring new perspective on a familiar theme.” IRISH TIMES
In this performance Aisling will perform excerpts from this critically acclaimed production followed by a post show discussion.
Looking at one of the central figures of the Easter Rising, Helena Molony was transformed from a bystander into a crucial participant in Irish history. Radical in her views and thinking, she was a woman ahead of her time. As an actor with the Abbey Theatre, she rehearsed for rebellion, carried out rebellion and suffered the consequences of her participation.
We meet Helena in her dressing room, preparing to go on stage once again as Cathleen in Yeats’ Cathleen Ní Houlihan, she summons her demons and the ghosts of that fateful Easter Monday when she took guns from under the Abbey stage and spilled revolution onto the streets.
Production photo by Pat Redmond.
Out Of The Ashes
By Conor Linehan
In Recital: THURS, MAY 19 | 6 PM
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
at Lincoln Center – Bruno Walter Auditorium
111 Amsterdam Ave (Btw 64th & 65th Streets)
New York, NY 10023
Booking opens 13th April 2016.
In this informal concert, Conor performs music from the period of the 1916 Easter Rising, up to contemporary music from Ireland in 2016. Conor will play and discuss music by early twentieth and twenty first century Irish and Irish related composers, such as Victor Herbert and Arnold Bax, along with excerpts from Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, which commemorates friends of the composer who lost their lives in World War I.
In addition Conor will perform his own contemporary compositions and improvisations on Irish songs, and will discuss the material played and the cultural and political context in which the music was created. This concert promises to be an entertaining, moving, and informative musical account of 100 years of Irish history.
Theatre 100
By Conor Linehan with Clare O’Malley
In Recital: TUES, MAY 17 | 7 PM
American Irish Historical Society
991 Fifth Avenue (Btw 80th & 81st Streets)
New York, NY 10028
A musical jaunt through Irish theatre of the 20th / 21st Century with Conor Linehan and mezzo soprano, Clare O’Malley.
Featuring original music composed by Conor Linehan for ‘The Plough & The Stars’ (O’Casey), ‘Deirdre’ (W.B.Yeats), ‘The Dead’ (James Joyce) , ‘Aristocrats’ ( Brian Friel ), ‘Last Days Of A Reluctant Tyrant’ (Tom Murphy) and ‘The Cordelia Dream’ ( Marina Carr ).
Conor Linehan Biography
Conor Linehan studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with Therese Fahy after graduating from Trinity College Dublin with a degree in Music and English, and continued his piano studies in London with Professor Peter Feuchtwanger.
As a pianist he has performed with the National Symphomy Orchestra of Ireland, the RTE Concert Orchestra, the Dublin Philharmonic and the Crash Ensemble amongst others. He has recorded CDs of German Cabaret music with the singer Eva Meier and recorded the Piano Concerto of the late American composer Don Ray with the Philharmonica Bulgarica and Derek Gleeson on the Albany label. He gave the premiere of Ronan Guilfoyle’s Piano Concerto with NSO Ireland.
He has written mant scores for theatre companies including most recently Druid Shakespeare for Druid theatre (Lincoln Center Festival),the Abbey Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, British National Theatre, Gate Theatre Dublin, Lyric Theatre Belfast, Liverpool Playhouse, Hampstead Theatre, CoisCéim Dance Theatre, the Corn Exchange and Siren Productions. Conor has recently completed a solo piano commission for the renowned British pianist Joanna MacGregor which she performed on her recent Irish tour.
Other performances include a string quartet for the London based Elysian Quartet and a Concerto for Piano and Jazz Ensemble for Therese Fahy and the RIAM jazz ensemble. Conor is on the piano faculty of the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Clare O’Malley Biography
Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, Clare has worked internationally in Theater, Film and Television. After attending the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Clare returned to Ireland, where she originated roles in four World Premieres – ‘The Dead’, Abbey Theatre, ‘The Last Summer’, Gate Theatre, ‘Monster Clock’, Smock Alley and ‘The Life and Sort Of Death Of Eric Argyle’, Dublin & Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. Clare has performed live while representing her country in song at the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku Azerbaijan. Her Recent USA theater credits include Eurydice in Mary Zimmerman’s ‘Metamorphoses’ at the Arden Theatre and Nina in the Tony Award winning ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ by Christopher Durang at the Philadelphia Theater Company.
In 2016 Clare appeared in Oscar nominated Creed with Sylvester Stallone & Michael B. Jordan. This summer Clare will travel to Cape May NJ to sing the music of Richard Rogers, in ‘Rogers’ Romance’.
16 Letters
by Geraldine O’Sullivan
Irish Repertory Theatre 25 May – 26 June 2016
132 West 22nd Street, (Btw 6th & 7th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011
This art exhibition of lifescape collages entitled ” 16 Letters ” is based on letters carefully selected from the public digital database, called the “1916 Letters Project”, in which there are 2,400 letters, written during the momentuous events prior to, during and after the Easter Rising and the First World War – between November 1915 and Spring 2017. The letters sent to, from and within Ireland give a sense of profound context to the extraordinary and ordinary historical events of this time. The lifescapes portray the personal and subjective written testimonies of the writers, within the wider context of contemporary events during this pivotal period in Irish history and transform the ordinary everyday banalities of life into multi-layered images.
Biography
Geraldine O’Sullivan is an Irish artist living and working in West Cork. She graduated from Dublin’s National College of Art & Design with First Class Honours. She has exhibited in the prestigious Royal Hibernian Academy and was named by Irish Tatler as one of Ireland’s Women of Influence 2015.
She has had numerous solo exhibitions in Ireland and the UK. 16 Letters is her first solo New York show. O’Sullivan’s work features in public collections in Ireland, including Áras an Uachtaráin (The Official Residence of The President of Ireland) and in numerous State and Public buildings as well as in private collections worldwide.
Salons
At the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center
Enter at the corner of Amsterdam Ave.
Poetry Ireland 100
FRIDAY, MAY 13 | 7 PM
An evening of Irish poetry hosted by Professor Clair Wills, Irish literature and culture expert, featuring new work as well as many classic and well loved poems. Poetry will be read by Sinéad Morrissey (newly announced 2016 recipient of E.M. Forster Award), Irish American poet Fanny Howe, world renowned Sean-Nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, Nick Laird and Ciaran Berry, along with Alvy Carragher, the chosen participant of Poetry Ireland’s 2016 program, “Introductions – Introducing Poets to the Craft of Poetry, to the Public.” Join us on a journey through one hundred years of Irish poems in ninety minutes!
No Country for Old Men: 21st Century Irish Writers Liz Nugent & Danielle McLaughlin on Transformations Personal & Public
FRIDAY, MAY 27 | 7 PM
Ireland is a microcosm of our planet’s social and political upheavals from World War One to the present – religion, gender, sexuality, tribe, class, national and transitional and transnational identity. From colony to Celtic tiger, writers have chronicled and critiqued the conventional wisdoms, inner and outer, that characterize the nation and the state of Ireland, continually poised between the old and the new. Join this wide ranging conversation, hosted by publishing icon Richard Nash, with the next generation of Irish writers including Liz Nugent and Danielle McLaughlin, sorting out what it means to be Irish, to be a writer.
At Glucksman Ireland House, NYU
1 Washington Mews New York, NY 10003
Irish American Writers & Artists
Tuesday, MAY 24 | 7 PM
A lively evening, showcasing newly minted Irish art. Featuring literature, art and song by John Kearns (an excerpt from his new play about Shakespeare), Marni Rice, Tom Phelan, Kathleen Donohoe, Geraldine O’Sullivan, Colin Broderick, Sarah Fearon, novelist Kathleen Donoghue, Jon Gordon, Karl Scully & Mary Deady.