ArtScape: A selection of comments and tributes about the incomparable Jerome Hynes, who died this week.
PAUL HENNESSY, chairman of Wexford Festival Opera: "He operated with total commitment to everything he did, and the emotional energy he put into it was palpable."
LOUISE DONLON, of Dunamaise Arts Centre, formerly general manager of Druid: "Jerome was a wonderful, kind and unfailingly generous man who will be greatly missed. He was a huge inspiration to me and many of my colleagues in arts management and was regarded as one of the finest arts administrators this country has known. His loss to the arts in Ireland is immense. He was a good friend and adviser and will be very greatly missed'
TONY Ó DÁLAIGH: "He was around so long and everything he did was successful, I was surprised he was so young. He was the foremost arts administrator in the country, and was liked and respected by everybody . . . Wexford will miss him hugely."
OLIVE BRAIDEN, Arts Council chairwoman: "His aim was always to make things simple, to make things clear and simple and easy to access. His loss is inestimable; he's irreplaceable."
FERGAL MCGRATH, of Druid: "Everyone loved him. He was a very able and strong-willed person, and most amiable and diplomatic. In his work with Druid in the 1980s and Wexford over the past 18 years, he laid out tracks that the rest of us are all following. He's a huge loss on a professional and personal level. He had such a brilliant, analytical mind. He could view any problem immediately and analyse and see the best way forward. He was just fantastic. He'll be a huge loss. I don't know where to start: Wexford, Druid and Garry, and all his family, my heart goes out to them all."
SEAMUS O'GRADY, Druid chairman: "Jerome was an outstandingly professional administrator and leader who dedicated his life to the development and promotion of the arts in Ireland. A devoted family man and a loyal and trusted friend, mentor and adviser to all who knew him personally inside and outside the arts."
PHILIP KING, who was on the Traditional Arts Committee with Hynes: "He was invigorating, imaginative and argumentative . . . Every traditional artist in Ireland should be grateful to him. His input into the work of that committee was hugely significant and important because he drew people together and listened to every side of what was going on. A truly inspirational, powerful and effective man who had great joy and sense of humour in him. He understood arts politics and understood that at the end of day the important thing was a context for creativity, where new can flourish. He died on the job. It makes you think. People give an awful lot. He was a giver, he gave everything he had, and was happy to do it."
Wexford Festival Opera is holding a memorial service for Jerome Hynes at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Wexford on the afternoon of Oct 16, the Sunday before the festival
The half Ronnie
Sometimes it's best to leave a living legend on the box, in the past, and not try to revisit the magic on stage. The consternation heard on Liveline during the week about Ronnie Corbett's appearance in Dublin (in the Bulmer's Comedy Festival) was mainly about the fact that after he had opened with a few jokes, he handed over the rest of the first half to his unadvertised backing band, who played for more than 50 minutes, leaving just the bulk of the second half for the star. According to Liveline, more than 30 people asked for their money back, but promoter MCD was having none of it, claiming that most of the audience loved the show and that Corbett was besieged by autograph-hunters at the stage door afterwards.
However, when Corbett did come back on stage in the second half, he walked through a thin helping of corny old jokes. He had some presence, and sang a couple of numbers with the band, but he didn't seem comfortable on stage. And surely he could have hired someone to put together some better material? His old partner, Ronnie Barker, was always more of an actor than a comic, but this gig proved that Corbett, too, should avoid live stand-up. All the same, a lot of the audience seemed to enjoy it.
The second-rate wedding band churning out middle-of-the-road standards - not what you expect when you go to what is billed as a solo comedy show - seemed to be an attempt to beef up a thin offering. But if instead there had been a comedy support act, it would just have shown up the weakness of the star attraction.
Abbey picks McPherson
Playwright and director Conor McPherson this week joined the luminous list of writers-in-association at the Abbey, a patronage scheme that Anglo-Irish Bank has made its own. Abbey director Fiach Mac Conghail described the scheme as "a unique arts patronage" which has "worked extraordinarily well for the Abbey, allowing us to forge relationships with leading Irish writers".
The award means that McPherson, whose work includes such stage plays as Rum and Vodka, The Good Thief, This Lime Tree Bower, St Nicholas, The Weir, Dublin Carol, Port Authority and Shining City, as well as the films I Went Down, Saltwater, and The Actors, bags €11,000 to develop new work.
Three years of co-productions, carte-blanche bursaries for young choreographers, conferences and a visiting writer-in-residence will be the result of a partnership between Cork's Institute for Choreography and Dance (ICD) and other European dance houses, writes Michael Seaver. As a member of Improvement of Dance through European Exchange (IDEE), the Cork dance house is in exalted company, including London's The Place and Paris's Centre National de la Danse. The first year's programme of the €1.5 million project was recently launched.
Through the network, six artists were chosen to produce work in at least two of the houses. Yasmeen Godder, whose Sudden Birds was at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2003, will visit ICD in May 2006 and Irish-based choreographer Rebecca Walters will be the Irish part of a three-way production of Schreibstück, by Thomas Lehmen (another Fringe visitor), also at ICD in April.
Strangely, the concept of a dance house which produces performances, facilitates workshops and offers support to dancers is relatively new. Many of the partners have been in existence for less than five years, so IDEE will not only consolidate international resources but also help to define how dance houses best serve their constituents. This debate will continue on December 2nd-4th at the first IDEE Conference at ICD.
Irish traditional music group Slide has been selected for Music Network's professional development award programme. Described in a review in this newspaper as "a powerhouse quartet of traditional musicians with attitude", the group has been awarded a place on Young Musicwide 2005, Music Network's professional development award scheme for young musicians.
Featuring vocalists and multi- instrumentalists Daire Bracken, Éamonn de Barra, Mick Broderick and Aogán Lynch, Slide join jazz ensemble Organics and New York-based clarinettist Carol McGonnell as recipients of the award.
Since their debut in 2000, Slide have toured from Scandinavia to Italy and from Estonia to Baltimore. Having recorded two acclaimed albums, The Flying Pig and Harmonic Motion, Slide are now working on a third CD. Slide can be heard later this year at Duiske Abbey, Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny (November 30th) and at Siamsa Tíre in Tralee, Co Kerry (December 1st), with further dates to be announced (www.slide.ie).