NYU > Ireland House > Events Calendar Spring 2005

Free admission to Members of GlucksmanIreland House* and to all students/faculty with a valid NYU I.D. card.

For all others: $10 admission charge at the door for regular event series: $15 admission charge at the door forBlarney Star Concert Series.

DAMIEN CONNOLLY with MATT and PETE MANCUSO. Damien Connolly is a young fiddler and button accordionist whose greatest musical influence was his father Martin, a button accordion virtuoso fromCountyClare. Damien is particularly renowned for his phenomenal artistry on the melodeon, a type of one-row button accordion popular in the early 20th century but not often heard in the contemporary Irish tradition.New York fiddle standout Matt Mancuso will join Damien, as will Matt's guitarist father Pete, who a few years ago produced Damien's superb debut recording.

Music historian David Kincaid performs selections from his album, The Irish-American’s Song, a fascinating selection ofUnion and Confederate Irish musical pieces. Kincaid's highly acclaimed first album, The Irish Volunteer, received such critical accolades as “one of the most emotionally credible Civil War recordings ever made, as well as a superb, irresistibly melodic Irish folk recording". (TheBoston Globe)

Larry Kirwan, lead vocalist of Black ’47, launches the band’s new album, Elvis Murphy: Green Suede Shoes together with Green Suede Shoes: an Irish-American Odyssey, a rock ’n roll autobiography that traces its protagonist from the Co. Wexford of his youth through three decades of musical life in New York City, encountering such musical luminaries as Cyndi Lauper, Shane McGowan, Neil Young and Joe Strummer.

March 2005 will mark the 75^th anniversary of the building of theEmpireStateBuilding. In his extraordinary third novel, Empire Rising, Thomas Kelly centers on the creation of one of the greatest engineering and human labor feats of the 20^th-century. The novel opens in 1930, and ground has just been broken for the building which rises during the book as if heedless to the Depression that surrounds it. The novel is a chronicle of the city's rough passage from a working-class enclave to a world-class metropolis. Kelly’s former novels are Payback (1997) and The Rackets (2001).

March 3

Thursday, 7 pm

ARTISTS OF TORY ISLAND EXHIBITION. The tiny, storm-tossed island off the north-west coast of Donegal is home toIreland’s most evocative school of primitive painting, fostered by the late artist Derek Hill, who recognized the artistic talents of the islanders and encouraged them to take up painting in addition to the traditional island arts of music, dance and storytelling. Artists Anton Meenan, Michael Finbar Rodgers, Ruari Rodgers and Patsy Dan Rodgers, the King of Tory will attend the opening and will speak about the island and their work.

March 4-6

GRIAN CONFERENCE ‘IRELAND AND RACE’

Recent events inIreland, such as the passing of the citizenship referendum amending the Republic’s constitution on11 June 2004 and the increase of bias crimes inDublin andBelfast, have highlighted the changing social demographics ofIreland. After centuries of sustained Irish emigration,Ireland finds itself in the position of receiving immigrants and their reception has not always been welcoming. The points of contact between the cultures ofIreland and those beyond its immediate archipelago have ranged from the exceedingly violent to the richly productive. This conference will address this theme in a broad manner and will include presentations from Jim Hunter and Bill Rolston, both of theUniversity ofUlster andJohn Waters, NYU. See www.nyu.edu/pages/irelandhouse for full conference schedule.

Concert will include musicians Tommy Sands, Michelle Mulcahy, Bruce Molsky, Billy McComiskey, Jerry O’Sullivan, Niall O’Leary, Darrah Car, the Golden School of Dance, and musicians fromIreland’s remoteToryIsland.

Featuring: A musican tribute to Harrigan and Hart, the Amazing Sand Dance as danced by Kitty O’Neill, the mistress of Terpsichore in the haydey ofNew York vaudeville, and a tribute to the late Sean McGlynn, the dean of Irish accordion inNew York.

Tickets $25-$40 available from Skirball box office (212) 992-8484 or www.skirballcenter.nyu.edu

Paul Murray reads from his first novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which has received an enthusiastic critical reception, was a finalist for the Whitbread Prize, and earned a nomination for the Kerry Irish Fiction Award.Murray was educated atTrinityCollege,Dublin and theUniversity ofEast Anglia. The novel is a deft and erudite comedy taking readers on a whirlwind tour of Ireland’s new economy and changing population, whose protagonist, Charles Hythloday, is something of a 21^st century Bertie Wooster.

Patrick O’Sullivan is the Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit at theUniversity ofBradford inYorkshire,England, and is the moderator of a lively academic online forum www.irishdiaspora.net . He is the editor of an influential set of volumes collectively titled The Irish Worldwide. His talk is entitled ‘Will We Wither’, a consideration of the impact upon research into the Irish Diaspora, and relationships with other areas of diaspora and immigration study.

Pete Hamill leads a panel of distinguished guests celebrating the life and work of writer John O’Hara on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. O’Hara was a gifted and controversial writer of short stories and novels. In 1928 he published his first short story in The New Yorker and eventually become a regular contributor to the magazine. He published his first novel Appointment inSamarrain 1934, a major success along with his second novel Butterfield 8. In 1940 his novel Pal Joey was turned into a successful musical with the help of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

Don Meade brings the Blarney Star Concert series to the Ireland House, featuring some of the greatest traditional Irish musicians in the world performing in an intimate setting every month. Please check the Blarney Star website for specific listings at www.blarneystar.com

Poet Michael Longley reads from his work. Born inBelfast and educated inTrinityCollege,Dublin, his first collection of poetry, NoContinuingCity: Poems 1963-1968, was published in 1969. Gorse Fires (1991) won the Whitbread Poetry Award. His most recent collection, The Weather in Japan (2000), won the Hawthornden Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Belfast Arts Award for Literature. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001. He is editor of 20th Century Irish Poems (2002). Co-sponsored by NYU’s Creative Writing Program.

Edna Longley speaks on ‘“Altering the past”: Northern Irish Poetry and Modern Canons’ considering how the Northern Irish poetic phenomenon since the 1960s might force a re-evaluation of some of the ways in which Anglo-American criticism has conceived ‘modern poetry’. Professor Longley is one of the most influential critics writing on modern Irish and British poetry, and is one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Irish culture. Her publications include Multiculturalism: The View from the Two Irelands, (2001), Poetry and Posterity (2000), and The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism inIreland, (1994).

Ronan McDonald,University ofReading, has research interests in Irish and British literature and drama, literary theory and film studies. AnOxford graduate, he studied with Professor John S. Kelly and recently published Tragedy and Irish Writing: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. His talk is entitled ‘Darwin and Yeats’.

Saturday, 10am-5pm
A Taste of the Yeats Summer School presented by the WB Yeats Society of NY: a day-long program evoking the spirit of the school inIreland. Followed by social and reunion. Participants will include Declan Kiely, Ronan McDonald, Ben Levitas, Vincent Dowling, and Michael Keohane, president of the Yeats Society,Sligo. See www.yeatssociety.org for further details.

Novelist Regina McBride established a critical reputation with her previous novels The Nature of Water and Air and The Land of Women , which have been called ‘shimmering and hypnotic’ by the New York Times. She has been a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her most recent work The Marriage Bed is a mesmerizing tale set in early twentieth-centuryIreland and explores the nature of passion, religion, mystery and sorrow in a journey from theBlasketIslands toDublinCity.

Airneál na Bealtaine: an evening of traditional music and song with NYU students and local musicians to celebrate the beginning of the Celtic summer with Irish Language Lecturer, Pádraig O’Cearúill.

All events are co-sponsored by the New York Times Company Foundation with additional support from the Irish Institute ofNew York and Aer Lingus

Glucksman Ireland House Events Calendar Spring 2005