Event of the week
Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone: The Art of Friendship
From Thursday, April 10th, until Sunday, August 10th, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, €11.25/€9.45/€5 (booking required), nationalgallery.ie
The National Gallery’s big spring-summer exhibition is dedicated to two of Ireland’s trailblazing modernists. Almost 100 works by Mainie Jellett (1897-1944) and Evie Hone (1894-1955) explore their experiences while studying in early-1920s Paris under the cubist artists André Lhote and Albert Gleizes. The exhibition also shows how their respective styles later diverged as their creativity progressed, as Seamus Heaney acknowledged, in 1997, when he wrote, “the headwaters of modern Irish abstract art began to gleam and discover a channel for themselves, the naiads of the source being Mainie Jellett and Evie Hone”.
Gigs
David Gray
Saturday, April 5th, 3Arena, Dublin, €51.20 (sold out), ticketmaster.ie
Ireland’s love affair with David Gray has never been on hiatus. We fell head over heels for his roughneck folk-pop 30 years ago with his first three albums – A Century Ends, from 1993, Flesh, from the following year, and Sell, Sell, Sell, from 1996 – and we’re still swooning thanks to Gray’s Irelandcentric 2021 album, Skelligs, and his latest, Dear Life. Despite the ubiquity of his 1998 crossover album, White Ladder – which, at close to 400,000 copies, remains the bestselling album in Irish chart history – Gray has managed to steer his career away from the middle ground with songs that readily connect. Also, Thursday, May 1st, Live at the Castle, Limerick; Friday, May 2nd, 3Arena, Dublin.
Ryan Adams
Saturday, April 5th, Waterfront Hall, Belfast, 7pm, £45.65; Monday, April 7th, and Tuesday, April 8th, Vicar Street, Dublin, €59.85 (sold out), ticketmaster.ie
Ryan Adams is nothing if not prolific. In the past three years he has released a dozen albums, three of which are track-by-track covers of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks and Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory. Adams arrives in Ireland several years after harassment allegations from seven women, including the singers Phoebe Bridgers and Mandy Moore, his ex-wife – he subsequently apologised for the ways he had mistreated people throughout his life and career – but his cachet among ardent fans remains. With a back catalogue of 30 albums, who knows what the maverick songwriter’s set list will be like?
Gavin Friday
Tuesday, April 8th, Spirit Store, Dundalk, Co Louth, 8pm, €33 (sold out), spiritstore.ie; Thursday, April 10th, Vicar Street, Dublin, €33, ticketmaster.ie
It has been more than 13 years since Gavin Friday performed solo shows in Ireland, but the reception for his latest album, Ecce Homo, has been so positive that he has polished his bovver boots and embarked on a European tour that takes in Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain. These Irish shows, however, are notable as much for the premiere here of Friday’s Euro-disco torch songs as for revisiting selected Virgin Prunes tracks (two of which, Sandpaper Lullaby and Caucasian Walk, he performed at recent shows in Lisbon and Porto).
Kamasi Washington
Tuesday, April 8th, 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin, 8pm, €44.20, ticketmaster.ie; Wednesday, April 9th, Cork Opera House, €41,
corkoperahouse.ie
After a serious back injury in the summer of 2024, but now as fit as the proverbial fiddle – one of the few musical instruments he hasn’t yet mastered – the saxophonist Kamasi Washington makes good on his promise to deliver music to his Irish fans not only from his back catalogue but also from his ridiculously rhythmic recent album Fearless Movement. “We’re all born elastic,” Washington says, “and if you don’t use it, you lose it.” In other words? Shake, rattle and roll.
Classical
Plínio Fernandes
Saturday, April 5th, Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge, Co Kildare, 7pm, €18; Sunday, April 6th, Freemasons Hall, Dublin, 3pm, €25; Tuesday, April 8th, Station House Theatre, Clifden, Co Galway, 8pm, €16.50; Wednesday, April 9th, Glór, Ennis, Co Clare, 8pm, €20; Thursday, April 10th, Jerome Hynes Theatre, Wexford, 7.30pm, €18; Friday, April 11th, Medieval Museum, Waterford, 7.30pm, €20 musicnetwork.ie
The versatility of the classical guitarist Plínio Fernandes is evident in his concert programming: he can switch from the South American music of Ary Barroso, Antonio Lauro and Heitor Villa-Lobos (Brazil’s most famous classical composer) to Mozart and Bach. Also, Sunday, April 13th, Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, 3pm, €25.
Podcast
Elizabeth Day: How to Fail
Sunday, April 6th, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin, 7.30pm, €42.50/€35, ticketmaster.ie
Elizabeth Day, an established feature writer and columnist for numerous UK newspapers and magazines, has gained greater prominence in the past five years as host of her How to Fail podcast, which explores notions of failure (and, by default, success). Day’s guest at this one-off live podcast show is the Irish writer and broadcaster Emma Dabiri.
Literature
Cúirt International Festival of Literature
From Tuesday, April 8th, until Sunday, April 13th, Galway, various venues, times and prices, cuirt.ie
Founded 40 years ago as a three-day poetry festival, Cúirt International Festival of Literature has become a steadfast, innovative staple of the Irish arts calendar. The clue to its longevity lies in the festival title. Alongside a wealth of Irish writers (including Sally Rooney, Roddy Doyle, Donal Ryan and Anne Enright), international names at this year’s significant birthday party include Salim Bachi and Ahmed Masoud. Also, check out the Telephone Exchange digital literary installation: dial a number, choose from numerous themes, and listen to new work from featured authors such as Maggie Armstrong, Elaine Feeney, Clara Kumagai and Mike McCormack.
Still running
UL Creative Writing Festival
From Wednesday, April 9th, until Saturday, April 12th, University of Limerick, various times and prices, uch.ie
Authors attending include Donal Ryan (Wednesday, April 9th), Marian Keyes (Thursday, April 10th), the Booker winner Paul Lynch (Friday, April 11th), the Pulitzer-winning poet Paul Muldoon (Saturday, April 12th) and Liz Nugent (Saturday, April 12th). Curated by Prof Joseph O’Connor.
Book it this week
Peter McGann, Vicar Street, Dublin, May 16th, ticketmaster.ie
Pan Amsterdam, Grand Social, Dublin, June 8th, thegrandsocial.ie
Forest Fest, Emo, Co Laois, July 25th-27th, forestfest.ie
John Grant, National Stadium, Dublin, October 4th, ticketmaster.ie
