Details of the Kilkenny Arts Festival have just dropped, with names such as DruidShakespeare, Martin Hayes, Toumani Diabaté, Robert Pinsky and Mick O’Dea catching the eye. There’s also going to be a a new giant luminarium from Architects of Air in Kilkenny Castle Park (image above).

You can find the full details on their web site here.

Kilkenny Arts Festival – announces 2015 programme

Outstanding artists from across the globe come to Kilkenny for landmark concerts, unique collaborations and artistic adventures in Ireland’s medieval city – 7-16 August 2015

Today (15 June 2015) Festival Director Eugene Downes unveiled the programme for the 42nd Kilkenny Arts Festival, which runs from 7-16 August 2015.  Featuring an epic celebration of JS Bach; the thrilling odyssey that is DruidShakespeare; stellar international and Irish musicians such as William Christie, András Schiff, Jordi Savall, Martin Hayes, Toumani Diabaté and Amjad Ali Khan; Robert Pinsky as poet in residence and portraitist Mick O’Dea as visual artist in residence, it’s time to immerse yourself in the artistic adventure that is Kilkenny Arts Festival.

Some highlights include:

–          Eternal Harmony: The Music of JS Bach, a unique series of 18 concerts featuring some of the world’s greatest performers exploring Bach’s timeless music

–          The Marble City Sessions, a bespoke series of musical collaborations between globally acclaimed artists hosted and co-curated by the great fiddler Martin Hayes.

–          DruidShakespeare, a new adaptation by Mark O’Rowe of Richard II, Henry IV (parts 1 & 2) and Henry V, directed by Garry Hynes and staged in the historic Castle Yard, Ireland’s finest open-air theatre, beside the Castle where Richard II actually stayed during his Irish wars.

–          A Festival Portrait created by one of Ireland’s leading visual artists, Mick O’Dea, over the ten days of the Festival, painting and sketching key Festival artists, scenes and events.

–          One of the world’s finest living writers, former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, as Festival poet in residence.

–          Two superstars of world music – from India, Amjad Ali Khan, the finest exponent of the sarod (Indian lute), and from Mali, Toumani Diabaté, the master of the 21-stringed Kora.  Both will be joined by their sons, who are inheritors of their families’ centuries-old performing traditions.

–          One of Europe’s leading choirs, the Gramophone Award-winning Cardinall’s Musick, will join forces with leading Irish choral singers to perform Thomas Tallis’ spectacular 40-part motet Spem in alium, one of the summits of choral music, in the glorious acoustic of St Canice’s as part of an evening celebrating the great Elizabethan composer.

–          The unique Secret Garden Music returning for a second year with surprise pop-up performances by top artists in six of Kilkenny’s stunning ancient gardens.

–          Lara Marlowe delivering this year’s annual Herbert Butler Lecture, The Age of Unreason: Nationalism and Jihad in the 21st Century.

–          Liz Roche Company’s acclaimed new dance work Bastard Amber, co-commissioned by Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Abbey Theatre and Dublin Dance Festival, and inspired by Yeats’ poetic vision of Byzantium, together with two major lectures on that ancient city.

–          Two intriguing one-act operas, The Human Voice and Susanna’s Secret, in new productions from Opera Theatre Company directed by Tom Creed and featuring some of Ireland’s rising stars of opera.

– Following two sold-out runs in the 2013 and 2014 Festivals, Architects of Air return with a new giant luminarium in Kilkenny Castle Park