<img src='' title='Event Category: Music' alt='' id='templ_icon_' width='' height='' /> Event Category: Music

The success of this Irish produced touring show, now approaching its 13th year and its fourth visit to Cork Opera House, is down to two important factors – the timeless quality of the Carpenters’ fantastic hits and the ability of Toni Lee to recreate the mesmerising voice of Karen Carpenter.

No one else comes near Toni in this regard, she truly is Karen Carpenter reborn. The world has hundreds of tribute shows touring on a non-stop basis, but only a handful of them are capable of genuinely transporting you back in time, by replicating a performance that is on a par with the original artist. The Carpenters, We’ve Only Just Begun is one such show.

Every song in the show is a classic hit from the best songwriters in popular music history. It is a hit parade of non-stop magic including joys like: ‘Superstar’, ‘Top of the World’, ‘Solitaire’, ‘Close to You’, ‘Rainy Days’ and ‘Mondays’, ‘Yesterday Once More’, ‘There’s a Kind of Hush’, ‘Please Mr Postman’, ‘I Need to be in Love’ and so much more . . . With the smoky smouldering voice of Toni Lee as Karen Carpenter, We’ve Only Just Begun is a unique concert event unmatched by any other tribute show.

Gerry McAvoy played, recorded and toured with Rory Gallagher for 20 years, from 1971 to 1991, also playing on every solo album that the legendary guitarist released over the course of critically and commercially successful career. The pair recorded ten albums together during a prolific decade during the seventies, including two live albums, Live in Europe and Irish Tour ’74.

The Belfast-born McAvoy had previously been in the band Deep Joy, who had supported Gallagher’s first outfit, Taste, on several occasions. Another member of Deep Joy, Brendan O’Neill, went on to play as part of Gallagher’s live band and is also part of Gerry McEvoy’s current Band of Friends, along with Paul Rose and Jim Kirkpatrick.

McAvoy was the mainstay of Gallagher’s live band for two decades as it went through several changes, but working most effectively and more often with McAvoy on bass, Gallagher and a variety of drummers. He then played with Nine Below Zero for more than a decade before forming Band of Friends in 2012. 2005 saw the publication of his biography, Riding Shotgun: 35 Years on the Road with Rory Gallagher and Nine Below Zero.

With special guests The Pat McManus Band.

After a break of three years, Aonghus McAnally is delighted to tour his Celebrating Christie Hennessy show once again. Having sold out the 2000 seater Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, the National Concert Hall, as well as venues all over the country, this is an opportunity to relive the life and music of Tralee’s finest son.

22 songs, including ‘Messenger Boy’, ‘Don’t Forget Your Shovel’, ‘Jealous Heart’, ‘All The Lies That You Told Me’, ‘If You Were To Fall’, and the iconic ‘Roll Back the Clouds’. A wonderful entertaining evening which brings the audience to its feet every night.

STRICTLY OVER 18s

Collaboration and shared experiences are at the heart of Sounds From a Safe Harbour. This year, with the help of Quiet Lights, SFSH has invited the Irish folk music duo Ye Vagabonds to interact and respond to the residency and host the festival finale Lighthouse Constellations, Ye Vagabonds with special guests from the SFSH/37d03d residency.

Ye Vagabonds are brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn. They grew up in rural Carlow but moved to Dublin in 2012 and became known on the traditional Irish, blues and folk scenes in the city, playing folk songs as well as their own original material. Their blend of harmonic folk music is influenced by traditional Irish and European music, American old time, and the music of the 1960s folk revival.

Multitudes affirms Feist’s ability to construct elaborate sonic worlds by following her singular song writing to its most poetic yet unbridled expression – it is a boundary-pushing collaboration conceived by Feist and Robbie Lackritz and developed with artist/filmmaker Colby Richardson, artist Heather Goodchild and Artistic Producer Mary Hickson.

Multitudes live show emerged in part from a certain dismantling of egoic pride that occurred in the aftermath of deeply transformative events in her personal life, with Feist noting that through birth and death; “There’s an arrival of a new sense of time as finite, time as precious, time as how are we going to spend it with one another?”

While that dismantling led to the many moments of painful realisation threading throughout her new album, Leslie’s latest body of work ultimately radiates an ineffable hope – an element encapsulated in the radical empathy and optimism of Multitudes’ closing lines; from the exquisitely tender ‘Song For Sad Friends’.

STRICTLY OVER 18s