Coniecto

House of Light

Last Friday evening, I decided to leave the house to go and attend  The House of Light Ritual – announced as an all night celebration of music and dance dedicated to Saraswati at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. A nice warm atmosphere welcomed us, the Tower Theatre was completely open to the lobby (it was the first time I saw it like this), there was tea and coffee and quite a few people around.

Soon after 9, Matthew Noone, who organised the event, introduced Prof. Karaikudi S. Subramanian playing veena and Karaikudi Krishamurthy playing mridangam. Although I am a big fan of Indian music, I must confess I don’t know much about  Indian instruments. The sound was fascinating, and I wished they would never stop playing.

Next, Prof. Mel Mercier invited us upstairs to see, play and listen with the newly forged gamelan, made on order for the IWAMD by a Javanese gamelan maker. I witnessed a gamelan performance before ( it was the Cork City gamelan), but I have never been so close to one.  What Mel did with the volunteers was incredible, assigning to each one a rhythm and some sounds, until they sounded like an experienced, faultless orchestra. In the second half, students from the BA in Contemporary Dance went to perform a dance in the middle of the room, adding to the magic.

Back downstairs in the Tower Theatre, we listened to Praveen Patiballa  playing  carnatic flute and afterwards to a few of  Ceara Conway‘s amazing songs.

Liam O’Brien  was invited on stage next with his concertina. Toward the end, Matthew Noone joined him on stage playing the sarode .

I had to go home around midnight, as I felt really tired. The concert continued until the morning, and I’m sure there were plenty of other unique moments – so sorry I didn’t last longer! On the way home, I was thinking how lucky I am to live and work here, to have all these cultural confluences on my door steps, and to be able to join in from time to time. On the night, I heard about the new BA course in Performing Arts – World Music that is starting in September at IWAMD. So many opportunities – lucky those who will take this course!

February 04 2017 | arts and Limerick | No Comments »

The importance of being useful

There are many days when I feel proud to be part of various groups of people that work on things that matter. And today was one of them.
It started with the Limerick OpenCoffee in the morning. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish by having coffee with like minded people once a month! Talking about a possible home for the MiLK Labs and the many things that could happen once we find it with James, planning joint events for our students with Bernie, exploring social graphs and couchsurfing, adding events to my diary and meeting new people.

And it ended at the university, in the Concert Hall, where I went for this month’s ICO concert. We are so lucky to have this world class orchestra in our vicinity and to listen to them every month!
Tonight, after the interval, this little video was shown, and Kathleen Turner, the ICO education officer explained how part of the money we pay for tickets goes to support initiatives like Sing Out with Strings:

I felt proud. My finances are not at their best these days, but this is a really worthy cause. Music can bridge many differences and transform people!
At the end of the video, the signature of Shannon Images brought back nice memories from Padraic O’Reilly’s talk at 3Dcamp back in 2008.

Life is good. And I am a very fortunate human being to live around so many people who work on things that matter – to them and to me!

October 07 2010 | arts and Events and Life | No Comments »