Music

VAN MORRISON: 40 Years of 'Van The Man'

One of Belfast's most famous sons, Van Morrison’s recording career now reaches back over 40 years – a formidable body of work that few artists come close to matching. His style incorporates rhythm and blues, soul and traditional, jazz and gospel, and if you look deep enough, you can even find him experimenting with ambient and electronica long before those terms were even applied to music.

They play his records in supermarkets while university academics debate the finer points of his lyrics. His music crosses cultures and international boundaries but most importantly, Van Morrison is a product of Northern Ireland. You can hear it in his intonation and in the lilt of his lines.     Read on…

Forty years ago, the McPeake Family were playing concert halls around the world, issuing a string of successful LPs and mixing with celebrities like the Beatles.

The family group had grown out of the McPeake Trio – Francie McPeake I (who was born in 1885 and died in 1971) and his sons, Francie II and James. That distinctive McPeake combination of uilleann pipes and harmony singing, which has influenced countless others, continues to this day.     Read on…

David Holmes is a DJ, a film soundtrack composer, a remixer, a club host, a record label boss and a sometime bandleader. By anyone’s standards, he is fearless and fast-thinking, and he’s managed to sustain an international career from his Belfast home. His music features in Hollywood films and arthouse projects. He makes commercially successful records, but also reserves the right to make challenging, left-field productions.

He was born in 1969 in Belfast. The youngest of a large family, he gleaned the essentials of punk and mod culture from his brothers and sisters, and also frequented the local cinema, where he was in thrall to films such as Quadrophenia.     Read on...

Duke Special is the musician of the moment, adoring magazine front covers and mastering the airwaves. Following a sell-out European tour, the Duke will be performing in Washington DC as part of the Northern Ireland Music Industry Commission’s showcase of the best of NI contemporary music.

With his album Songs from the Deep Forest hotly tipped to go supersonic, his current single Freewheel about to break the Top 40 and a nomination for Best Album at the Choice Music Awards under his belt, Duke Special is a man going places.
 Listen to Duke Special's 'Feet in the Sky' or simply Read on for further information.

Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open was the UK's best-selling album of 2006, selling 1.5 million copies. The album went gold in the US, maintaining a spot in the upper quarter of the Billboard 200 list for over 15 weeks, on the heels of the popularity of single 'Chasing Cars'.

The rock band have come a long way from their beginnings in Belfast and their university days in Dundee, Scotland. Snow Patrol are playing the Bender Arena in DC on March 23.     Read on…

Northern Ireland’s best known musical exports have tended to be its performers, musicians like James Galway, Barry Douglas and Phil Coulter. There is, however, a distinguished tradition of classical composition stretching back to before the 20th century.

Brian Irvine is one of a new generation of classical composers. His ideas for compositions come from unorthodox sources like comics, rubbish art, jugglers and circuses, ‘people with odd facial features’, silence, racecourses and call centres.     Read on…

FOY VANCE Northern Ireland singer/songwriter

Singer Foy Vance lives as an Northern Ireland expat in London, but has left part of his heart in the North. On his website he writes:

'I've always known how beautiful Belfast is, but I don't think I fully appreciated it until I left. Is it like this for everyone, or is it mainly Irish artists? Every Irish artist that writes about, sings about or paints the beauty of Ireland seems to be someone that has long since left its shores.'

 Listen to an exclusive track of Foy Vance and watch his latest video

BARRY DOUGLAS: Virtuoso Pianist and Conductor

The accolades that Belfast-born pianist Barry Douglas has gathered during his career leave others of his generation in the shade.

Dr Barry Douglas OBE is also Prince Consort Professor of Piano at the Royal College of Music in London. Building on his other love of conducting, Douglas established chamber orchestra Camerata Ireland in 2001.
 Listen to an interview with Barry Douglas

CAMERATA IRELAND : A Unique Musical Sound

‘Camerata is a chamber orchestra of young Irish musicians,' says Barry Douglas who founded the orchestra in 2001.

'Very quickly it took off into something very special. It has a unique musical sound and has been very successful at building up a very strong international career very quickly.

‘Although not a youth orchestra, it is a very young vibrant orchestra. 75% of musicians are in their 20s and that shows in the way they play music.’ Read on and listen to Camerata Ireland playing Beethoven…

Camerata Ireland is a chamber orchestra composed of young musicians from Ireland.
 Listen to Camerta Ireland perform Beethoven or simply Read on for further information...

IAIN ARCHER: Ivor Novello winning singer-songwriter on life after Snow Patrol

Iain Archer’s music sounds like ‘Feet on gravel, engines of small boats, the thing you do when the sun is in your eyes, playgrounds, collapsing bridges, small birds, lightning’. So he says.

If you’ve been around the NI music scene long enough, you’ll remember when Archer was a long-haired, girly-faced crooner who penned the unforgettable song ‘Wishing’. The logic of ‘Wishing you were wishing you were wishing you were mine’ occupied many hours of pondering in pubs and festival tents.  Read on and listen to...

OPPENHEIMER: Belfast’s Electro Wonderkids

From their unofficial, live debut at the Crescent Arts Centre back in 2004 through to last month’s debut album launch at The Empire and countless appearances in-between, Oppenheimer have grown into one of Northern Ireland’s most treasured, unconventional bands.

Working with young film-maker Brian Philip Davis, Oppenheimer’s single Breakfast in NYC brings pop and pop art onto the Northern Ireland scene. Read and watch…

TRADITION SINGING IN ARMAGH

Traditional singing and music is alive and well across Northern Ireland and nowhere more so than in Armagh.  Paul Flynn is a fiddler and regular attendee at the Slieve Gullion Festival.

‘When I was young my parents made the big mistake of bringing me to a Fleadh. It was here that I immersed myself in a blend of exciting music and craic and discovered Guinness and girls.’  Read on…

Rosie Stewart: loves to Sing

Rosie Stewart is a singer and ambassador for traditional Ulster singing. With a style that is entirely her own, she picks and chooses her repertoire from songs that might be 200 or 20 years old.

Born Rosie McKeaney in the townland of Cashel in the parish of Garrison, Co Fermanagh, Stewart has music and song in her veins.

Opera Theatre Company

It’s that age-old story that we all know and love: young boy wakes up to find himself transformed into a beetle, said beetle takes on the world but soon finds that said world isn’t really that fond of beetles.

Such is the plot of Bug Off!!!, the latest full-scale production for children by the Opera Theatre Company (OTC).