Irish Arts Center Announces Fall 2019 Season

Irish Arts Center (IAC), a multidisciplinary center dedicated to bringing people of all backgrounds together through the excellence and dynamism of Irish arts and culture, announces its Fall 2019 Season. As construction of the New Irish Arts Center progresses, IAC kicks off its final year in its intimate current home with an array of gripping performances and events. (The Center's 51st Street home will be renovated following the opening of the new, adjacent 11th Avenue building). Music programming encompasses exemplars of contemporary classical, trad, jazz, and soaring pop, and the organization is thrilled to honor icon Elvis Costello-deemed one of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time by Rolling Stone-at this year's Spirit of Ireland Gala (October 18). Literary events feature vital voices in poetry and prose and honor legendary contributors to both forms; performances push the boundaries of Irish dance; and, across numerous master classes, talks, and family events, IAC continues to serve as a growing hub for community, conversation, engagement, and education.

This season features performances from inimitable musicians with singular approaches to historic and contemporary musical forms. David Keenan-a "young singer with an old poet's soul" (NPR) and a "raw, genuine talent" (The Irish Independent)-first became known from a 2015 viral video as "Irish Guy Singing in Taxi." He returns to IAC with a powerhouse 8-piece ensemble and week-long residency, with performances October 22-25. IAC's 13th annual Winter Solstice Celebration (December 11-15) returns to the organization's cozy 51st Street home this year-at once a celebration of the season, and a send-off to the beloved space prior to its renovation. Featuring Mick Moloney, Athena Tergis, The Green Fields of America, and many special guests, the performances will provide audiences with a joyous musical immersion in Christmas and midwinter traditions from Ireland and around the world.

Two concerts honor Irish composers' and musicians' immense contribution to contemporary classical music. Pianist Isabelle O'Connell will provide an up-close experience of 20th and 21st century music, including work by eminent Irish composers in an intimate solo performance at IAC (November 7). The organization will also partner with the Kaufman Music Center for an evening with Alarm Will Sound-"one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene," (The New York Times)-in Merkin Hall's Ecstatic Music Festival. The small, audacious orchestra will perform Donnacha Dennehy's The Hunger-a "powerful" work that "bears hearing and rehearing" (The Washington Post), based on accounts of the Great Irish Famine.

Dance performances this season explore the electrifying acts of revisiting and expanding tradition, as well as visualizing and embodying preexisting musical works. With Baryshnikov Arts Center, IAC co-presents the U.S. premiere of Colin Dunne's Concert (created in collaboration with Sinéad Rushe and Mel Mercier), confronting Irish fiddle player Tommie Potts' iconic-and choreographically challenging-1972 album The Liffey Banks. The Herald Scotland writes, "You could say that Dunne and Potts are kindred spirits, itching to revitalise the bone-marrow energies of traditional Irish music and dance by being bold and inventive with the riffs and rhythms they have at their virtuosic fingertips, and feet [...] Concert is, then, like a merry-bantering conversation between them." Concert will be performed at Baryshnikov Arts Center, November 14-16. Darrah Carr Dance returns to IAC and reteams with duo Dana Lyn & Kyle Sanna for performances of the The Coral Suite, a choreographic exploration of the musicians' 2018 concept album of the same name, creating a trad musical environment that evokes the astonishing biodiversity of a coral reef (November 23-24).

The organization continues to highlight and honor the vast scope of Irish and Irish American literature, bringing in some of today's most celebrated authors and turning the space into a brimming forum of words and ideas. The 11th Annual PoetryFest, curated by Nick Laird (Modern Gods, Feel Free), will pair poets Paul Muldoon and Kevin Young; Martina Evans and Tina Chang; Jane Clarke and Michael Dickman; Stephen Sexton and Deborah Landau; and Julie Morrissy and Cathy Linh Che; in a series of free readings taking place November 2-3. This year, the festival's annual opening event-Favorite Poems (November 1)-will honor Seamus Heaney. Celebrating the publication of the anthology 100 Poems-a "wonderfully produced...special collection, compiled by Seamus Heaney's family, which fulfills the poet's long-held ambition...to bring out a special anthology culled from every stage of his long career" (Irish News)-a dynamic group of writers and artists will join his daughter Catherine Heaney to read their favorite works by the late Nobel Laureate. An exhibition of Heaney manuscripts, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland, will be on view throughout the Festival.

The life's work of another Irish literary great-Edna O'Brien-will also be celebrated this season, in an event presented by IAC and Symphony Space in association with PEN America (November 13 at Symphony Space). When in 2018 O'Brien received the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, PEN America wrote, "Emerging from a time and place when women authors were not the norm, O'Brien endured public condemnation, her books were burned and banned. Through it all, her writing remained undaunted, vital, her force unmitigated. Her stories cross oceans, go on the run, risk life and limb, and her readers are swept along on extraordinary journeys." She will be joined by Richard Ford and other special guests, as they look back on her eye-opening career.

Just as IAC cultivates long relationships with artists and presents thrilling, resonant performances, IAC too fosters community by engaging and inspiring people of all ages with educational programming and interactive events. This season, master classes will offer participants a chance to delve into the Celtic roots of Appalachian balladry with Elizabeth LaPrelle (September 21) of respected folk duo Anna & Elizabeth, to improve their concertina skills with Brenda Castles (October 5), and to learn more about North American percussive dance traditions with Mick Moloney (November 20). Kids and family events include an afternoon of lullabies from around the world with singer/multi-instrumentalist Eleonore Weill (September 29), the annual, sell-out Oiche Shamna, celebrating the Irish origins of American Halloween traditions (October 27), a delightful day of printmaking, poetry, and play with SMASH TYPE's Ben Weber and Darrah Carr Dance (December 7), and more.

Alongside its partnerships with the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Kaufman Music Center, IAC joins Brooklyn Academy Of Music for presentations of two productions in BAM Next Wave 2019: Michael Keegan-Dolan's Swan Lake/Loch na hEala (October 15-19) and Dead Centre's Hamnet, written and directed by Ben Kidd and Bush Moukarzel (October 30-November 2). Through its vital relationships with these institutions, IAC helps extend the presentation of superb Irish artistry beyond its walls. In the lead-up to the opening of the New Irish Arts Center, the season is the work of an organization poised for its own momentous next phase of rich contributions to the New York cultural ecosystem.