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Free

Bringing the opening night to a close, join Dotts O’Connor at Mattimoe’s. Dotts is  best known as the guitarist of Choice Nominated Irish Band, Come on Live Long, so expect some classic songwriting and tunes.

Free

Music Generation Roscommon Sunday July 17th will be at Daly’s Storehouse, come and support the upcoming talented local bands & groups from 4pm -6pm

Bands and Acts Performing are:

Toteum a 4 x piece Rock Band who write their own material

Nomadaz a 6 x piece Rock band who write their own material and perform covers.

Bad Neighbours a 5 x piece pop/rock band who perform covers.

West Be Well a 6 x piece pop band who write their own material and perform covers.

Epson  a 6x piece band who perform covers.

SunTides a 8x piece girl group who perform mainly folk songs and ballads.

Senior Youth Voices a 10 x piece Senior Vocal Group.

supported locally be the GRETB and Roscommon County Council

€3

This workshop will be a fun, playful and creative introduction to mindfulness for children. The workshop will include mini mindfulness practices, stories, discussion, visualization and art activities. Louise will support children to calm and relax their monkey minds and to be kind to themselves and each other

Bring a cushion!

€15

In this special one-off session Brian Leyden will guide you through the writing process with
the insight, expertise, and clarity for which he is renowned. Whether you’re getting started,
or eager to advance your abilities, this is an encouraging and enjoyable opportunity to bring
a fresh eye to what you write, to gather essential knowhow, and get to know the tools of the
craft that will keep you writing.

Free

Pop up Busking: Music Generation Roscommon with Boyle Arts Festival present ‘Pop Up Buskers’  Saturday July 16th, follow the trail and hear an eclectic mix of genres throughout the town.

 supported locally by the GRETB and Roscommon County Council

€15 
This two-hour workshop focuses on contemporary poetry from Ukrainian and Russian poets.
Poems – translated into English – by poets from both Ukraine and from Russia will be read,
analysed and discussed in an informal workshop setting. All participants will have a chance
to express their views on each poem’s poetic style, language and structure, as well as the
poet’s concerns and how he/she expresses these concerns. The poems have been selected by
Gerry and represent some of the best of contemporary Ukrainian and Russian poetry. There
will be some writing exercises included in the workshop, providing the participants with an
opportunity to make a start to some poems of their own.

Gerry Boland is a poet and author of both adult and children’s books. He has published nine
books, the latest being The Far Side of Happiness, a collection of short stories published by
Arlen House in 2018. His third poetry collection, The Many Sides of Love, is due for
publication later this year. Gerry has many years’ experience of leading workshops, both in
poetry and in prose. He lives in north Roscommon

€7

Kara Lord Bissett is a harpist from Dublin, who commenced her musical studies at Kylemore College, Ballyfermot, where she studied harp under Dr. Anne Marie O’Farrell and Claire O’Donnell, and piano under Eoin Tierney.  She has recently completed a Bachelor of Music degree at TU Dublin Conservatoire, where she studied concert harp under Professor Clíona Doris, and specialised in performance and pedagogy. During her degree, Kara performed extensively with the TU Dublin Harp Ensemble and the TU Dublin Traditional Ensemble. She has been a prizewinner at Feis Ceoil and at the TU Dublin Conservatoire competitions and she has performed in masterclasses with Elinor Bennett at the Wales Harp Festival and with Jean Kelly as part of the National Concert Hall Masterclass Series. She also has a keen interest in pedagogy, and she works as a harp and piano teacher in Dublin.

€7

Tiantian Gao is 8 years old and studies the piano with Shirin Goudarzi- Tobin at the TuDublin Conservatoire.   As a five year old, Tiantian won first prize at the Liszt International Youth Piano Competition in Shanghai/China, and since then she has continued to enjoy success at competitions internationally and in Ireland. Her most recent awards include the first prize in Euregio International Piano Competition 2022 (Category A) as well as the first prize in both Feis Ceoil Junior Piano Solo (E) and Junior Piano Duet (C). Tiantian is a student at Rathdown Junior School and in addition to playing the piano, she also enjoys playing the flute, drawing and swimming.

Ai Lin Sun (15 ) lives in Dublin and started to learn piano in 2017. She has been studying in TUDublin with Dr David Mooney since 2019. In 2021, she won 1st prize in both the Rhona Marshall Cup and John Field Cup at the Feis Ceoil. This year, in 2022, she won three further competitions in the Feis Ceoil; the Patricia Read Cup, the Claude Biggs Cup and Junior Concerto competitions.

Mickey Glen Tomas was born in Dublin in 2004. His began to learn piano at the age of 7 in the Newpark Academy of Music. At the age of 13, he moved to DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, now TU Dublin Conservatoire, to continue his musical studies, under the junior program. Now in 6th year, Mickey continues to study piano under Dr David Mooney.
Mickey has performance experience both in competitions and recitals and is a prizewinner in TUDublin, Feis Ceoil the EPTA competition. He has played in venues such as the National Concert Hall and the RDS.

€7

Bláthnaid Nicholson is a 22-year-old soprano from Leixlip, Co. Kildare. Since finishing both a BA Music & Drama and Bachelor of Music degrees in University College Dublin, she has dedicated herself to the art of performance under the tutelage of Colette McGahon-Tosh. Bláthnaid is a multi-prize winner, most recently winning The Marchant Cup and The Veronica Dunne Operatic Ensemble alongside her peers and has been commended on her performance of lieder at the 2022 Feis Ceoil. Bláthnaid also has a wealth of experience in choral performance, being the recipient of a choral scholarship with The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin and most notably featuring on their album Perpetual Twilight with Signum Records. Having previously performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, New York and The National Concert Hall, Dublin, she has since gone on to work with leading conductors with The National Symphony Orchestra in Wallace’s Lurline and in Blackwater Valley Opera Festival’s most recent production, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

Stephen Walker is a young tenor from Ireland studying with Dr Robert Alderson. He recently completed his undergraduate degree in music at the TU Dublin Conservatoire. Stephen is fortunate to have had many opportunities to perform in productions and concerts in Ireland and the UK. He recently represented Ireland in the Romantic National Song Network concert series held in Glasgow, Scotland, and is a featured artist on the Network’s website.

Stephen is a multi-prize winner at various competitions. Recent success include the Dermot Troy Trophy for Oratorio singing in 2022, and the Tenor Solo and Count John McCormack Bursary in 2019, all at the Feis Ceoil.

Recent notable achievements include being accepted to work with the Glyndebourne Academy for young singers in Glyndebourne Opera in 2021 and performing in the Chorus of Gluck’s Orfeo at the Blackwater Valley Opera Festival.

€7

Discover where we came from as a people

Explore our earliest customs, beliefs and superstitions from our Celtic legends up to the culture of the last century

Learn how songs and story-telling have such importance for us

Discover how we coped with dispossession, famine and emigration

Explore with us a world of the imagination, the spiritual, the mysterious and the unseen

We look at key factors that helped to shape us as a people and helped us to survive and thrive down through the centuries

Join us as we engage you in wit and laughter​

​The show will have particular emphasis on our rich heritage of songs and music. This will involve a degree of spirited audience participation!

Ollie is a native of County Kilkenny, graduate of Maynooth University in History and Folklore and has been involved in music and folklore for most of his life. He has toured extensively, performing shows in Ireland, the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia and the US

www.thehiddenfolklore.com

€7

Cattle have been in Rathcroghan since the days of Queen Maeb (Maeve). With an agricultural heritage spanning more than 6,000 years, the farming community are as much a part of the area’s history as the monuments themselves. So, how can farming and public access to important sites co-exist in a way that protects these ancient monuments?

Utilising land management design and architectural solutions, work is underway on a series of walking and driving routes to provide public access to the most important archaeological sites while efforts have been made to reward local farmers for their role as care-takers of the monuments.

To coincide with W.J. Sloan Hardware’s Arts Festival window display, Daniel Curley, manager of the Rathcroghan visitor centre, architect Steve Larkin, and artist Paula Barrett (turfprojects.ie) will speak about the history of Rathcroghan, the visitor access plan and the way-marking colour scheme.

€7

Fraser Newton was born in Scotland, Glasgow in 1999 and has studied classical guitar from the age of 12,  with the help of Michael Mcgeary and Professor Allan Neave at the RCS juniors programme in Scotland.  He moved to Dublin and began his undergraduate degree at TUDublin Conservatory, studying with Marco Ramelli. Since beginning a degree Fraser has gone on to have the opportunity to play across Europe, taking part in numerous competitions, performances and master classes with the likes of Pavel Steidl, Sean Shibe and Andre de Vitis, a vital part of his growing experience as a guitarist.

During the course of his studies, he has had the privilege of many performance opportunities throughout the Dublin area and has been able to focus on and gain a well rounded knowledge of 19th century guitar music and performance

€7  (includes coffee)

Boyle Arts Festival is delighted to present Lenny Chen in concert at King House

Lenny is a very talented young man with a bright future as a concert pianist and he will play compositions by some of his favourite composers, along with popular favourites.

Apart from his success in National piano competitions during this year, such as the RIAM PianoFest, Newpark Festival, Féis Ceóil, Henle Competition and the Irish Youth Piano Festival, Lenny has great interest in his St. Joseph’s BNS projects and he still finds time to play Gaelic Football and Hurling for Boyle GAA.

The programme will include,

Frédéric Chopin: Waltz  Op.Posth, in E minor: Waltz no.10 in B Minor Op.69 no.2

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J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in D minor (WTK, Book I, No. 6), BWV 851: Sinfonia No. 15 in B Minor, BWV 801.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart   Sonata in G  K 283 1st movement, and many more.

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€5 pay on door

The Boyle Singers Group are together since 2006 and sing a range of songs from traditional, folk, Irish and English and mostly unaccompanied.
Tonight they will be joined by special guest Barney Murphy. Barney is from Newtownbutler in Fermanagh and is well known in Traditional Singing Circles and Singing Weekends throughout the country, including Inisowen, Sligo and Ulster Singers Weekend in Derrytresk.  He was awarded the “Keeper of Tradition” at the Ulster Singers Weekend at An Creggan Centre.  Barney has a rich quality voice in a great traditional style.

Free

A stroll around the lovely Pleasure Grounds of Boyle in the company of poet Gerry Boland. He will read poems associated with rivers and lakes and perhaps even rain (!). You are encouraged to bring along a poem that you have written, a poem that you love, or you can come along with no poems in tow and simply enjoy the walk, the poems, and the chat. Poems associated with water are particularly welcome. This gentle, poetic stroll is an opportunity for lovers of poetry to meet and to share their favourite poems.

Meeting Point:  By the bridge in the car park behind post office

Free

Mules & Men are an Irish four-piece string band. Critics have described their music as a ‘”shake-up of the more traditional and conservative Bluegrass with its almost compulsory themes of shack-living, girl-leaving blues”. (Hotpress) Mules & Men are modernizers – using the fast pace of banjo-driven tunes and combining that with a Rock ‘n Roll sensibility.

The quartet features a quintessential, acoustic line-up of bluegrass instrumentation: Luke Coffey (banjo), Lily Sheehan (guitar), “Paahto” Cummins (mandolin) and Niall Hughes (double bass). Despite the employment of traditional instruments and folk-based four-part harmony singing, Mules & Men write solely original material that utilises much electronic input such as effects pedals. The influence of EDM (electronic dance music) and first-wave punk is never far out of reach and, quite comfortably, determines them a suitable “party band”. Yet, equally, their background in bread-and-butter, traditional bluegrass means that these musicians know the intricacies of their craft extremely well and could easily hold their own in an acoustic folk environment

€7

Please note this will be a 90 minute event

Brain (cell) transplantation for Parkinson’s: fact or fiction?

Professor Eilís Dowd is originally from Carna in the Connemara Gaeltacht. She spent her childhood alternating between playing outdoors in the gorse, heather & rocks, and being confined to bed with severe asthma, struggling to breathe. Her interest in biology stemmed from a fascination with the profound impact her anti-asthma medications had on her quality of life, and this was encouraged by her mother who was herself a secondary school science teacher. As an undergraduate student studying for a BSc in Applied Biology, Eilís first learned how her inhalers actually produced their biological effects, and this cemented her love of pharmacology which she retains to the present day.

By pure chance (that’s another story!), Eilís was offered a PhD position in Pharmacology at the University of Edinburgh, and this was the beginning of a 12 year period studying and working abroad – including at the University of Cambridge, McGill University and Cardiff University. Through a combination of hard work, good fortune and timing, Eilís was then offered a Lectureship in Pharmacology back in her home city of Galway in 2005 where she is now Professor in Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

In NUI Galway, Eilís balances her role as a pharmacology teacher to undergraduate and postgraduate science and medical students, with her leadership of an active and dynamic Parkinson’s disease research team. Over the years, her research has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the European Union, Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board and the Irish Research Council.  She has also served as President of Neuroscience Ireland, Ireland’s National Neuroscience Society, and President of NECTAR, the Network for European CNS Transplantation & Repair, while she currently sits on both the Executive Committee and the Governing Council of FENS, the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. Sometimes Eilís has to pinch herself to see if this career really belongs to that severely asthmatic girl from Carna in the Connemara Gaeltacht

The Benefit of Dance for people with Parkinsons

Prof Amanda Clifford is an Associate Professor in Physiotherapy at the University of Limerick in Ireland.  Her research programme of work includes the design and evaluation of evidence-based programmes to optimise health and wellbeing, and prevent falls in older people and people with neurological conditions. She previously worked clinically as a Physiotherapist at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals, NHS Trust, the Whittington Hospital, NHS Trust London, UK and the Wellington Hospital, St. John’s Wood London; with experience in range of rehabilitation settings including a neurological rehabilitation unit and an outpatient falls clinic.

 Dr. Orfhlaith Ní Bhriain is an ethnochoreologist, Senior Lecturer and Course Director of the MA in Irish Traditional Dance Performance and MA Irish Dance Studies  programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland. As an accomplished performer and teacher of Irish music, song and dance, she delivers workshops and seminars nationally and internationally. Her research interests include Arts in Health, Community Based Research and Irish music and dance studies. Orfhlaith and Amanda have worked together for years to design and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of evidence based dance programmes for older adults and people living with Parkinson’s disease.

€7

Throughout Paul Kelly’s childhood his father, Patrick Kelly, sent John Hinde postcards to him in California when he was visiting the land of his youth. By the time he was nine, Paul was accompanying his father on these trips, and developed his own love of Ireland. His father died in 2015, and in 2018, Paul came back to live in Ireland with his family. His book Return to Sender is his tribute to John Hinde, whose jewel-bright Ireland was the stuff of his childhood dreams. It’s also a tribute to his father.