Eclectic mix of cutting edge new work to feature at Kilkenny Arts Festival

Kilkenny Arts Festival 2024 promises an eclectic mix of cutting edge new work in the magical setting of Ireland’s medieval city.
Festival Director, Olga Barry has announced the dates for Kilkenny Arts Festival which will run from 8-18 August.

Details were also announced of three highlight events that will feature in KAF 2024.

Kilkenny Arts Festival will present the Irish Premiere of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Drone Mass; performed by two of Ireland’s most virtuosic ensembles, Chamber Choir Ireland and Crash Ensemble, conducted by Paul Hillier. This work will be performed in St. Canice’s Cathedral on Saturday, August 10 at 9:30pm. Tickets priced €35/32 are on sale now

Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969-2018) wrote for theatre, dance, television and film. His work was mostly stylised by its blending of traditional orchestration with contemporary electronic elements. He was nominated for an Academy award and won a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for the film The Theory of Everything.

Written shortly before his untimely death, Jóhannsson’s statement work, Drone Mass was commissioned by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) and premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with ACME and the vocal group, Roomful of Teeth in 2015.

From an ever-evolving composer it bridges the ancient and utterly modern, Jóhannsson said in an interview : “One very early influence was reading about John Cage’s experience in an anechoic room where the only sound you are left with is the high-pitched drone of your nervous system, and the low-pitched one of the blood pumping. For me, the drone is connected to the body. It’s a fundamental vibration that anchors music and gives you a foundation.”
Jóhannsson’s Drone Mass is not a ‘mass’ in the sense we might know it, it can be described best as a contemporary oratorio – the text is that of an ancient Egyptian Coptic Hymn that consists of only free-floating vowels.

This is the Kit is the musical project of Kate Stables; the alt-folk outfit that is also her pseudonym. Each album since 2008’s Krulle Bol to 2023’s Careful of Your Keepers shows a songwriter ever in the vanguard of her craft – This is the Kit’s music places companionship at a premium, so being welcomed into its space feels like privilege, on record and in performance with her stellar supporting cast of Rozi Plain (bass), Jamie Whitby-Coles (drums) and Neil Smith (guitar). Tickets for St. Canice’s Cathedral on Wednesday, August 14, are on sale now priced €35.

In today’s fast-paced mid-apocalyptic world everything can yield to despair and pointlessness. Continuing to be here at all, to stand tall and make music to gather to, that’s a heroic act. This is the Kit in concert is a joyful coming together.
Following TITK’s breakthrough 2015 album Bashed Out, featuring collaborators John Parish and Aaron Dessner, 2017’s Moonshine Freeze cemented the UK-born/Paris-resident Stables’ position as the rising star of contemporary folk. Her fifth album as This is the Kit Off Off On was written before the pandemic but captured the themes of resilience and restarting, homesickness, needing space, love and solitude; garnering it critical acclaim.

Once again the Festival will join forces with the OPW to Light Up The Castle. Kilkenny Arts Festival in association with the OPW is delighted to announce the commission of a new short film specially created for KAF24 – a spectacle event for all the family from Fictions Picture Company and directed by Jack Phelan - Light Up the Castle: Six Eyes Sawn which will take place on August 14 to 17 at 10:40pm. Admission is free. 2024’s Light Up The Castle event wants to celebrate the magic of castle construction, and if that can’t be done with construction itself, it’ll just have to be done with magic!

More announcements to follow.

Keep updated at kilkennyarts.ie