12 Points!

So what’s all this Douze Points stuff? Thankfully, it’s not the Eurovision but a visionary snapshot of the best of contemporary Euorpean jazz. Originally the Dublin-based baby of the Improvised Music Company, it’s now become something of a Pan-European festival, heading out for new adventures every second year. Luckily, 2011 is a homecoming years, so between Wed 4 and Sat 7 May you can sample a vibrant cross-section of jazz in all its glorious diversity. Project Arts Centre is the venue, with 3 bands each night from 7pm. The opening night kicks off with Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and her Quintet, followed by some gritty improv with Amsterdam’s The Ambush Party and piano magic from London-based trio Phronesis. Thursday features the Lisbeth Quartett from Berlin headed up by impressive young saxophonist Charlotte Greve, innovative Parisian trio Metal-o-phone and Rome’s hard-grooving Neko quartet. Stockholm gets a look in on Fri 6 with adventurous Swedish singer Isabel Sorling and her Quintet, more pianistic lyricism from Geneva’s Colin Vallon Trio, whose debut album for ECM has just been released, and PELbO from Oslo with an exhilarating mix of tuba, voice and drums. The final night starts with Dublin’s own RedivideR – brass & bass spearheaded by drummer Matt Jacobson, Slovenia makes its first festival appearance with Kaja Draksler’s Acropolis Quintet, and wrapping it all up with a sheen of catchy Scandinavian creativity, Elifantree from Helsinki. Tickets are €20/€16 per night or a recession-friendly Festival Pass is €60 – that’s a fiver a band. Check it all out at www.12points.ie, www.projectartscentre.ie

New Music & Jazz

Two shows on Wed 27 April: Some esoteric jazz from Tarab, headed up by Irish-based Italian musician Francesco Turrisi, who launch their debut CD at Whelan’s. With Turrisi on accordion, harmonium and various Arabic and Sicilian frame drums, his jazz/classical background is elaborated by saxophonist Nick Roth and cellist Kate Ellis, while an Irish counterbalance is provided by traditional flautist Emer Mayock and percussionist Robbie Harris. www.improvisedmusic.ie

Meanwhile the Contemporary Music Centre team up with the Irish Composers’ Collective for a Night of New Music in the NCH’s Kevin Barry Room. Kicking off at 6pm with the CMC’s new music::new Ireland salon series (admission free, booking recommended) Movement of Sound is a collaboration between composer/performer Karen Power, who works primarily in the acoustic and electro-acoustic field, with well-known dancer and choreographer Mary Nunan. After a break for wine and tapas, the ICC present the Quiet Music Ensemble, featuring John Godfrey, Séan Mac Erlaine and Isla de Ziah, performing the works of Alyson Barber, Solfa Carlile, Patrick Connolly, Susan Geaney, Aristides Llaneza and Adam McCartney. Pre-concert talk at 8.15pm. www.nch.ie, www.cmc.ie, www.irishcomposerscollective.ie

Sundays@ Noon

Some great music coming up at the Hugh Lane Gallery. On Sun 17 April the Irish Baroque Orchestra Chamber Soloists , led by Grammy-nominee Monica Huggett , play Schubert’s wonderful Quintet, giving audiences a rare chance to hear this masterpiece, with its unusual combination of 2 cellos, 2 violins and viola, performed on period instruments as audiences in the 1830s would have heard it. On Sun 24 pianist and Fulbright Alum Therese Fahy presents inter-changes: the first decade of Irish piano music in the 21st century prior to a US tour as part of the Imagine Ireland festival. Representing a cross-section of Irish contemporary music, from the traditional to the avant-garde, it features works by Siobhan Cleary, Ronan Guilfoyle, Jonathan Nangle, Kevin O'Connell, Ian Wilson, Michael Holohan and Bill Whelan. Guilfoyle turns up again on Sun 1 May when violinist Michael d’Arcy and pianist Izumi Kimura present ‘Celebrating Bartok’, with Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Ronan Guilfoyle and Bela Bartok, and a new work by Guilfoyle to celebrate Bartok’s 130th anniversary. Sun 8 features the Songs of Seoirse Bodley, with soprano Syvlia O'Brien, and on Sun 15 Annette Cleary and Lance Coburn play works for cello and piano by Rachmaninov and Webern. Concerts start at 12 noon and it’s all FREE, but get there early if you want to get a seat. www.hughlane.ie

Honest

A new performance space makes its debut on Mon 21 March downstairs in Cafe des Irlandais on Georges St, onetime home of the late lamented Cafe Bar Deli. The Matchbox Theatre is offering a teatime Play & a Pint deal for a tenner, kicking off with the Irish premiere of last year’s Edinburgh hit Honest by upcoming English playwright DC Moore. A one-man comedy about a disgruntled civil servant who goes on the piss, (and seeing as you’re having a teatime pint there’s plenty of opportunity for life to imitate art) it features Edwin Mullane of Whacker Murphy’s Bad Buzz fame. Runs til 3 April. www.backofthehandtheatre.com

Gorecki's Last Songs

The long-established award-winning Silesian Quartet from Poland commemorate the recent death of their fellow countryman, the celebrated Polish composer Henryk Mikołaj Gorecki with a concert at the NCH’s Kevin Barry Room on Sat 12 March. They play two of his chart-topping string quartets written for the Kronos Quartet in the 1990s: No 1 Already it is dusk, and No 3 …songs are sung, completed in 1995 but not premiered until 10 years later. The concert is sponsored by ArtPolonia and the Polish Embassy. www.nch.ie

Sensorium

Originally established in York and now transferring to Dublin, The Link Project, brainchild of composer Judith Ring, aims to break a few boundaries and change a few perceptions in the structured presentation of music performance. Sensorium, a week long multidisciplinary music festival running at Project from March 7-12, gives us the first taste of such possibilities, encompassing works that include contemporary music, improvisation, electronic music, electro-acoustic music, audio-visual works, music and dance, and physical theatre. The festival opens on Mon 7 with Sonic Boom, a free concert (booking required) of tape works by electroacoustic composers Ed Bennett, Donnacha Dennehy, Roger Doyle, Judith Ring and Jurgen Simpson, including a chance to hear the first Irish performance of Doyle’s The Ninth Set, winner of the Magesterium Prize at Bourges in 2007. Tue and Wed are given over to workshops, with evening concerts showcasing the results. The Contemporary Music Centre hosts a free lunchtime concert on Thur, while the big noise is reserved for Fri & Sat. On Fri a diverse mixture of technological, instrumental and visual performances features works by Enda Bates, Enrico Bertelli, Theo Burt, Alex Harker, Emily Kalies, Jonathan Nangle, Matt Postle and Judith Ring, including the latter’s My one’s bigger than yours for double bass and cello. Sat wraps things up with a lineup of electro-acoustic, instrumental, electronic, improvisation and audio visual works from Enrico Bertelli, Linda Buckley, Jane Cassidy, Emily Kalies, Matt Postle, Judith Ring, Radek Rudnicki, Garrett Sholdice and Tim Wright. Musicians include Enrico Bertelli and Simon Roth on percussion, Joe Browning on shakuhachi, Kate Ellis on cello, Suzanne Fatta and Michelle O’Rourke on vocals, Matt Postle on trumpet and Malachy Robinson on double bass. Should be a good one. www.the-link-project.com, www.projectartscentre.ie

Lay Me Down Softly

Playwright Billy Roche does a nice line in harking back to times past. It’s not mere nostalgia, mind, he has a real knack for tapping into the zeitgeist of another era, his characters embodying the pleasure and pain, expectations and frustrations, a warts-and-all microcosm of rural Ireland. There’s also a yen for music in there too, Roche himself having once been the angular frontman for The Roche Band. Lay Me Down Softly is his most recent play, first seen at the Peacock in 2008 and now at Project in a new production (previews from Tue 8 March, opens Thur 10) following its sell-out run during last year’s Wexford Opera Festival. It’s 1962, and the burlesque world of Delaney’s Travelling Roadshow, with its enticing Boxing Booth, takes centre stage. Step on up, ladies and gentlemen, smell it, sense it, feel it, hear it, and become part of this dark and dangerous story, a mythic tale of love and loss. Meet Theo, the charismatic, violent ringmaster and his Carmen-like lover Lily. Rub shoulders with Peadar, Theo’s tried and not-so-trusted sidekick; the limping Junior, gentle and handsome; the waif-like Emer, searching for her runaway father; and the vain prizefighter Dean, who takes on all comers on a nightly basis – until a challenge from a professional fighter throws a spanner in the works. Playwirght doubles up as director, with a cast that includes Gary Lydon, Pagan McGrath, Lesley McGuire, Anthony Morris, Dermot Murphy and Michael O’Hagan. Design is by Wexford’s Bui Bolg with lighting by Paul Keogan. Runs til Sat 2 April. www.projectartscentre.ie

Sundays@ Noon

Well, January certainly got a bit sluggish but hey, it’s a new month, so time to deslug. The Hugh Lane Gallery as always is a great place to be on Sundays @ Noon; today you can hear the resurrected music of Ina Boyle, a vanished Wicklow-based composer of the early 20th century who studied with Vaughan Williams and was the only female composer included in the Carnegie Collection of British Music. On Sun 13 sibling duo Joanne and David Quigley play Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Beethoven and Elgar, and the Irish premiere of Phillip Martin’s Mollification. There’ll be some pretty fancy fingerwork on Sun 20 when pianist Jonathan Plowright plays a scintillating mix of Chopin - including the Fantasie in F minor, 2 Nocturnes and a Scherzo - and Paderewski, from the Series de Morceaux Op 16. And on Sun 27 former NSO principal William Dowdall plays new music from Ireland and New Zealand for flute and electronics as featured on his new CD Breathe. And guess what, it’s all FREE.

Irish Baroque Orchestra

Masterworks from the Irish Baroque Orchestra is a series of 4 one hour concerts at Christ Church Cathedral featuring Baroque blockbusters from Germany, France and Italy. Between Tue 18 and Sun 23 Jan you can hear 4 Bach Suites, 4 Rameau Suites and some of Vivaldi’s finest Concerti da Camera, all under the leadership of the irrepressible Monica Huggett. And if you buy 2 tickets online, you get the 3rd one free. www.irishbaroqueorchestra.com

Sundays@ Noon

The Hugh Lane Gallery’s free Sundays@ Noon series is back on track. On Sun 16 renowned Irish jazz composer, bassist Ronan Guilfoyle, blurs the lines between classical and jazz in his new improvising chamber group Trilogue, featuring Swiss jazz singer Sarah Buechi and Japanese contemporary classical pianist Izumi Kimura. With a repertoire of newly composed pieces by Guilfoyle and music by Bartok, Ligeti and Bach, Trilogue utilises the virtuosity of all three players and their experience of both improvised and composed chamber music to create a wide range of timbres, moods and dynamics. Just the thing to start the new year. On Sun 23 the Ensemble Avalon, featuring violinist Ioana Pectu-Colan, cellist Gerald Peregrine and pianist Michael McHale play an interesting programme including Debussy's Cello Sonata, Mozart's Piano Trio in B Flat and the world premiere of a new piece by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly. An interesting mix on Sun 30 sees well known soprano Virginia Kerr team up with pianist Therese Fahy for music by Andre Previn - his 1992 piece Honey and Rue - and Messiaen's Poemes pour Mi, dating from 1936. www.hughlane.ie