Love:live music

Tomorrow Fri 16 is Ireland’s first National Music Day, with free live music filling various nooks and crannies around the country. Love:live music’s big Dublin event is a concert of traditional Irish music at the Button Factory featuring a rake of top notch musicians including the quintet of Slide, the trio of Fidil and the duo of Brendan Begley & Caoimhín O Raghallaigh (free but ticketed). The National Youth Orchestra are at Airfield in Dundrum and composer George Higgs takes to the highways and byways on his Joculator or musical bike. The Contemporary Music Centre launches their new outdoor Sound Gallery Off the Rails at 19 Fishamble Street, featuring music by composers such as Kevin Volans, Donnacha Dennehy, Jennifer Walshe, Ian Wilson, Roger Doyle and more. There’s lots of other stuff including workshops, talks etc – one of the more unusual is Harps on the Bridge, a gathering of 24 harpers who will perform on the beautiful harp-like Samuel Beckett bridge from 12.45pm. Check it all out@ www.lovelivemusic.ie

And it mightn’t be free but it’s well worth your few euros (there’s still some seats left for a tenner and the max price is €30) when the brilliant Russian pianist Boris Berezovsky takes to the NCH stage tomorrow night with the RTE NSO for Brahms’ mighty Second Piano Concerto, coupled with another biggie, Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. Ash Cloud Update: Berezovsky is grounded, so Finghin Collins, who recently performed the Brahms No 2 with the Ulster Orchestra, is stepping into the breach. www.rte.ie, www.nch.ie