ArtScape: When the news broke that Belfast hadn't been shortlisted for European city of culture, there was, says Stella Hall, director of the Belfast Festival at Queen's, a rush by many people in the North to "disassociate themselves from failure".
But she thinks the "nothing to do with me" attitude is the wrong one to take and that lessons should be learned instead. Her attitude is to "always look on the bright side of life - that's the spirit".
Getting it together this year "has been a struggle," says Hall. "It has been difficult to balance the weight of expectations and our resources." She was talking at the launch in Dublin this week of this year's festival at Queen's, which runs from October 24th to November 9th. It's not just in the Republic that the economic bite is being felt, even if things up North don't seem quite as stricken as here. This year, the Belfast festival lost half its UK lottery funding and the direct finding it got via the NI Events Funding for the past five years has finished and has not been replaced. Added to that, Guinness has cut back its sponsorship of the festival. This has been incorrectly reported as a withdrawal of sponsorship - but Hall is adamant that Guinness is still the festival's major sponsor, particularly for jazz and comedy.
Despite all this doom and gloom, Hall is still upbeat, describing the 40s (last year was the festival's 40th anniversary) as a time to take stock and look for new direction. So she describes the programme as "slimmed down", not with a fancy Atkins diet, but with an emphasis on quality rather than quantity. (In fact the programme is smaller, printed as an A4 newsprint magazine by the Belfast Telegraph.) Hence, perhaps, there's less risk-taking and more reliance on crowd-pullers this year. And the box office has sold twice as many tickets as at the same time last year. It reports an increase of 15 per cent in ticket sales to the Republic, and to that end the festival has a box office in Dublin's Liberty Hall for the first time, as well as euro deals via the NI tourist board (1850-230230).
Hall has decided on a theme of Colours of the World for the festival - including a massive flag display, the first opportunity outside of Africa, in "a place where two flags dominate", to see contemporary asafo flags made by master flagmakers from Ghana. The opening, a free, outdoor event, is Sticky, in the Botanic Gardens. A spectacle previously seen at Sydney Opera House and created by Improbable Theatre (of Shockheaded Peter fame) it involves the creation of a 100-foot tower made of sticky tape and a fantastical collage of fireworks, giant insects, gorgeous colours and music.
The Ulster Orchestra performs the sacred music of composer Arvo Pärt in Clonard Monastery, Eddi Reader sings the songs of Robert Burns (with the UO) and Colin Reid's Quintet No. 2, inspired by The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien and narrated by Stephen Rea, as seen at the Galway Arts Festival, is also in Belfast. Theatre-wise there's a taste of Bollywood in Yeh Hai Mumbai Meri Jaan (The Bombay of My Dreams) and the world première of Gary Mitchell's new play - a comedy! - Deceptive Imperfections.
The Regina Monologues, starring Janet Suzman, promises an insight into Queen Elizabeth I, while there's also hip-hop from Philadelphia. At the Grand Opera House there's The Picture of Dorian Gray and the National Theatre's Vincent in Brixton directed by Richard Eyre and there's work from installation artist David Mach and photographer Nick Danziger.
Music includes Carla Bley, The Bad Plus, Susana Baca, Bob Geldof performing Boomtown Rats material with his band, The Rent-to-Killers, the reformed Moondogs and Jello Biafra. Details from 01-8721122, www.belfastfestival.com, or Belfast booking 048-90272626.
The last word on funding
Things have been looking dodgy for some time for Arts Council multi-annual funding (MAF), because of Government cutbacks, and now it has officially been suspended. At the second meeting of the new council, on September 18th, a decision was taken that, while the council is committed to the principle of MAF, it can't make commitments into the future "so long as it is uncertain of its own future funding from Government". John O'Kane's letter this week to the 70 organisations involved in MAF, said that "the Council is fully conscious of the value to your organisation of multi-annual funding in recent years: in terms of artistic and business effectiveness, there is no doubt that forward planning is good for the arts". The council could now only respond on an annual basis but he encouraged people to "continue to plan forward on a rolling basis, and to keep us informed of your medium-term plans". And to top it off, MAF clients will have to duplicate their funding applications, tailoring them to an annual revenue application - by the October 10th deadline. It must be galling for all concerned that there was such a short window of reasonable Government arts funding, offering a glimpse of what might have been, before going back to the bad old days of limping along from year to year in the dark about where organisations stand.
New opera specialist
James Conway, general director of English Touring Opera, and outgoing artistic director of Opera Theatre Company, has been appointed to the new Arts Council post of opera specialist, writes Michael Dervan. His new Merrion Square responsibilities will see him substituting one part-time post in Ireland, at OTC, for another, at the Arts Council, while still retaining full-time responsibilities with ETO, a London-based company which tours far and wide around England.
Conway has never been shy in offering views about the state of opera, not least in expressing his feeling that the creation of a national opera company would be highly undesirable in an Irish context. Given the importance such a company could be expected to play in the employment of Irish singers and musicians, his is an intriguing view for an expert adviser to the Arts Council to hold. Or is it? In 1998, an Arts Council opera development committee presented a summary of its findings to the professional opera community without even managing a single mention of the issue of a national company. The Baltic republics, all smaller than Ireland, have, through national opera companies, levels of musical employment that Ireland can only look at with envy. Even Iceland, with its tiny population, has ambitions towards a year-round opera company. It may well be that Conway is already whistling the tune that Merrion Square is most happy to hear.
And furthermore . . .
John O'Conor, director of the AXA Dublin International Piano Competition, and jury member of this month's Leeds International Piano Competition, must have uttered a sigh of relief last Saturday, writes Michael Dervan. In recent years, he has seen Davide Franceschetti, first prizewinner in Dublin in 1994, fail to take the top prize at a number of subsequent competitions he entered (including the Leeds and the Van Cliburn), and Alexei Nabioulin, the winner in Dublin three years ago, pushed into second place at the Tchaikovsky in Moscow last year. He faced a similar prospect at Leeds last Saturday, when Finnish pianist Antti Siirala, first prize winner in Dublin last May, competed in the finals - two previous Dublin prizewinners, Li Wang (second in 2003) and Evgeny Sudbin (fifth in 2000) had already been eliminated in the early stages. But Siirala came through for him, and added the top prize in Leeds to his earlier successes in Dublin and London. Siirala also took the audience prize, which allowed viewers and listeners to the BBC's broadcasts to vote along with the audience in the hall. Taiwanese pianist Chiao-Ying Chang, placed second in Dublin in 2000, took fifth prize at Leeds. The other finalists were: Evgenia Rubinova from Uzbekistan, placed second (a close call, according to pianist Artur Pizarro in his BBC commentary); Yuma Osaki (Japan, third); Igor Tchetuev (Ukraine, fourth); and Sodi Braide (UK/Nigeria, sixth). Siirala's next appearance in Ireland is for Music for Galway on Tuesday, October 23rd. Details from 091-705962.
As both Belfast and the Wexford Opera festivals gear up, the Fringe - including the free lunchtime Critical Voices discussions in the Spiegeltent - is in full flow and the Dublin Theatre Festival begins on Monday. Those looking forward to Arthur Miller's visit for the Playing Politics event next weekend will be disappointed that he can't travel on medical advice, because he's recovering from a short bout of pneumonia. The rest of the Playing Politics programme goes ahead as planned, and Miller is hoping to visit at a later date for a public interview in association with Critical Voices.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra visits Co Donegal for a five-day residency programme next week. The residency - under conductors David Brophy, James Cavanagh and Robert Houlihan - will feature educational workshops for primary and secondary school children (Letterkenny and Ballyshannon), a schools' concert (Bundoran) and public concerts (Letterkenny and Bundoran). It is expected that over the course of the week, the orchestra will perform to between 4,500 and 5,000 people. Booking and ticket information: Letterkenny, An Grianán Theatre, 074-20777; Bundoran, Great Northern Hotel, 072-41204.