Friday, May 13, 2016

The People Speak - Stephen Rea reads James Connolly

Daily News : Susan McKeown speaks about Easter Rising and Two Month Festival

Songwriter assembles NYC cultural festival to celebrate Ireland's Easter Rising 100th anniversary

Susan McKeown (seen in January 2011) is the founder of CualaNYC.

A Grammy award winning songwriter who splits her time between New York City and Dublin is putting together an Irish cultural festival to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising.

The first CualaNYC kicks off on Tuesday. The two-month festival hosts over 35 events, including a performance of a William Butler Yeats play on the beach in Coney Island, Irish poetry performances on NY Waterway’s East River Ferry and a music festival at the Knockdown Center in Queens.

Susan McKeown, CualaNYC’s founder, said it was only natural that celebrating the Rising — a key moment in the fight for Irish independence — would involve the city.

“I was inspired by the amount of New York history related to the Rising, from the fact that two of the rebel leaders, James Connolly and U.S. citizen Thomas Clarke, lived in the Bronx and Brooklyn, to the immense connections with the labor movement,” said McKeown, 49. “It's known now that the Rising wouldn't have happened without New York.”

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Cuala NYC Presents : The People Speak Monday May 16, 2016 @ The New School Auditorium

The People Speak: Ireland will bring to life, through words and song, the dramatic history of political struggle and protest in Ireland and beyond, from its earliest history to the present day.

Featuring: Stephen Rea, Steve Earle, Ciarán Hinds, Amber Tamblyn, Brian Jones, Geoffrey Arend, Geraldine Hughes, Griffin Dunne, Marin Ireland, Mercedes Ruehl, Williams Rossa Cole and musicians Ivan Goff, Susan McKeown, Isabelle O'Connell and Old Hannah, and other guests to be announced. Seating is first-come, first-served and some seating will be reserved for students, faculty, and staff of The New School (with ID).

Presented by CualaNYC, Voices of a People's History of the United States and The New School.

WHEN: Monday, May 16, 2016 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EDT) - Add to Calendar
WHERE: The New School, Auditorium - 66 West 12th Street, New York, NY 10011 - View Map
TAGS: New York, NY Events Festival Community

Monday, May 09, 2016

"The drink is like music. How can you explain it to someone who has not fallen in love with it ? How it floods your head and pushes the blood three times faster through your veins. The blessed moment of the first one the morning after when it starts to clear away the fear and anxiety it put there the night before. Drink makes the world a place of certainty. In every way.

    I remember the day I played 'Lord McDonald'. I sat in a small studio in the South Bronx at noon. Pulled the bow across the strings for a couple of minutes  and then it started. I played it through just once and I could feel it pulsing through me. Something. Every second of it was like an hour and the notes were coming from a place so far back in myself I could hardly stand it. I followed the music, chased the music with colours going through my mind and Killavil and my dead brother and the men who taught me to play and the end of all this and the twist in myself and green and brown. It was bringing me somewhere and I finally got there."

              - Eamonn Sweeney, "Lord McDonald" 