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Private Notes
In the first programme, John goes to London to talk to Irish playwright Enda Walsh, whose opera The Last Hotel, co-written with Donnacha Dennehy, is about to open at this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival. Walsh talks about growing up in north Dublin in the 1970s and 80s, about being taught by Roddy Doyle, and about the highlights of his stage career from his first hit, Disco Pigs, in 1996, which gave a young Cillian Murphy his first major acting role, to the most recent, Ballyturk, which starred Murphy, Stephen Rea and Mikel Murfi. Walsh has also written for film – he penned the screenplay for Hunger (2008), in which Michael Fassbender played Bobby Sands – and he won a Tony for Best Book of a Musical for Once in 2012. Walsh is currently co-writing a musical with David Bowie, due to open in New York in November. Based on The Man Who Fell To Earth, Lazarus asks the question where would Thomas Jerome Newton – the character Bowie famously played in the 1976 film – be now?
John meets performance artist Amanda Coogan, whose new exhibition, I’ll sing you a song from around the town, is now on at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. Coogan talks about growing up in Tallaght, Dublin in the 1970s and 80s, as the oldest child of deaf parents, in a home that was at the heart of a wider vibrant deaf community.
Singer/songwriter Glen Hansard tells John Kelly about 25 years of The Frames, his new solo album and how it all began with a headmaster who told him to quit school early and pursue his love of music. Glen looks back on his teenage years busking on the streets of Dublin, meeting other musicians such as Kíla and Mic Christopher, as well as forming the Frames and the group’s early influences. ‘The Waterboys was the main reason why the Frames became a band.’ Glen opens up about life as a musician and, of course, playing a musician on-screen – first in 1991 in Alan Parker’s film The Commitments and in 2006 in John Carney’s musical Once – not to mention his Oscar win for the song Falling Slowly.
This week, John talks to New York composer Philip Glass, who published his acclaimed memoir Words Without Music earlier this year. Philip Glass grew up in a secular Jewish family in 1930s/40s Baltimore, Maryland where his father owned a record store and would bring home the records that didn’t sell and listen to them. In this way, Philip got an early education in classical greats such as Bartok and Stravinsky. In 1952, at the age of 15, he went to university in Chicago to study maths and philosophy and was exposed to a jazz and blues scene second to none at that time – Charlie Parker, for one, was a regular on the circuit. He went on to study at the world-famous Juilliard School of Music in New York and then with Nadia Boulanger and Ravi Shankar in Paris. Back in New York in the 1960s, early works by Philip Glass marked him out as an innovator (in the company of Steve Reich, Terry Riley and others), and changed the grammar of modern classical music. The opera Einstein on the Beach was his first major success in 1976 but he worked as a furniture removals guy and a New York taxi driver (Dali was one passenger) until he was 41 to fund his composing. Now 78, Glass is as prolific and as much in demand as ever. The breadth of his work is highlighted in the range of people he has worked with from Samuel Beckett to Woody Allen, and Paul Simon, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen.
John goes to Barcelona to talk to the visual artist Sean Scully, who has celebrated his 70th birthday this year with some 15 exhibitions worldwide. Born in Inchicore, Dublin, in 1945, Scully grew up in Dublin and London. He now lives in New York and also spends time at his studios in Germany and Spain. One of Ireland’s leading painters, Scully is best known for his abstract paintings, his use of a signature grid of vertical and horizontal lines. This year alone, he exhibited at the Venice Biennale for the first time and he became the first Western artist to have a major retrospective in China. He has also been the subject of three shows in Ireland, at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, the Kerlin, Dublin and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Scully has also been working on one of the more unusual commissions of his long career, from the Benedictine monks at the famous monastery of Montserrat, near Barcelona, who asked him to create a permanent exhibition at their 10th century chapel, Church of Santa Cecilia. This is an honour accorded to few artists and sees Scully following in the footsteps such as Rothko and Matisse, with their chapels in Houston, Texas, and Vence, French Riviera respectively. The new work at the Church of Santa Cecilia opened in June 2015.
Author Kevin Barry has published three award-winning books since 2007, two short story collections, There Are Little Kingdoms, and Dark Lies the Island, and one novel, The City of Bohane. His exuberant fiction is full of twisted, shape-shifting trickster types, and runs the full range in tone from dark comedy to outright horror. At home in Sligo, he talks to John Kelly about his new novel Beatlebone – his first attempt at historical fiction, he says – in which a crisis-ridden John Lennon tries to get to his island off Clew Bay, in Mayo in 1978. He also tells John about his first-ever short story, written in the aftermath of another kind of trauma.
From his screen debut as Pat Barry in RTE’s The Riordans in 1978, actor Gabriel Byrne has gone on to conquer Hollywood and indie films in the US, win awards for his stage work on Broadway, and return to TV screens in recent times with hit series such as HBO’s In Treatment and, on Irish TV screens, to star in Vikings and as Quirke, John Banville’s pathologist detective in 1950s Dublin. He talks to John Kelly about why it’s harder than ever to make indie films now in the US, the pull of TV (it’s where the writers are) and stage fright. He also reminisces about the early fame of Irish TV dramas, The Riordans and Bracken – ‘Surreal is a word I would use’ – and working with legends like Robert Mitchum: ‘chain-smoking and incredibly well-read and talking to me about Máirtín Ó Direáin.’ Currently working in the UK on the film Lies We Tell, which also stars Harvey Keitel and Gina McKee, Gabriel Byrne also talks about the challenges and excitement of his next major Broadway role, as James Tyrone, Eugene O’Neill’s iconic patriarch, in A Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2016, playing opposite Jessica Lange as his morphine-addicted wife Mary.
This week, John Kelly goes to New York to talk to singer/songwriter Elvis Costello, aka Declan Patrick MacManus, about his new memoir Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink. It’s almost 40 years since Elvis Costello released his first album My Aim Is True. Since those early punk and new wave roots, he has written a stream of unforgettable hits including Oliver’s Army and Watching the Detectives, and explored many other music genres, collaborating with Burt Bacharach, Paul McCartney and the Brodsky Quartet along the way. The memoir Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink looks back on a remarkable life in music, and a serious lineage in the music business, a heritage that comes from county Tyrone originally. His father Ross (who considered himself Irish even though he never lived here) was a jazz musician who sang with the Joe Loss Orchestra and played the same bill at the London Palladium as the Beatles in 1963, while his grandfather Pat was a World War 1 veteran and a trumpet player on the famous White Star Line ships in the 1920s and 1930s.
Jennifer Johnston published her award-winning first novel, The Captains and the Kings, in 1972. She was 42. Making up for what might have looked like a late start, she has written 17 novels since – including her most famous, How Many Miles To Babylon, in 1974 – as well as several plays and short stories. A new novel Naming the Stars is published on e-book this month and in print in 2016. Her fiction charts the crisscrossing of private lives and public events the length and breadth of 20th century Ireland, unearthing flawed characters and family secrets, often in the Big House, often against a backdrop of war. Jennifer Johnston tells John Kelly about growing up in a well-known Dublin family – her father was the playwright Denis Johnston and her mother the actor and producer Shelah Richards – and about living in Derry since the 1970s until recently, writing with bombs going off around her and at one time working with paramilitary prisoners on both sides.
In the final programme this series, John meets performance artist Marina Abramovic at her home in New York. Marina Abramovic was born in 1946 in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, the daughter of Communist partisans and national heroes, soldiers who were also prominent members of General Tito’s new post-war government. Abramovic would go on to forge her own uncompromising cause in performance art – first to great scandal in her still Communist hometown, then in a more liberal Amsterdam in the 1970s, and finally in New York where she is something of a superstar. Her work in the 1960s and 70s, in common with a lot of performance art of the time, saw her test her body and her audience to extremes. Famous early works include Rhythm O, in 1974, in which she offered the public 72 items – from a lipstick to a gun – to use on her body, an invitation of which they took full advantage for good and ill.
This week, John Kelly meets THE Irish film director of the moment, Lenny Abrahamson, whose new film Room has been on something of an awards roll since it started showing at film festivals worldwide in 2015. Based on the book of the same name by Irish author Emma Donoghue, it stars Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay as a mother and son who live in captivity in a world called Room. Lenny says: “What you’re also talking about in Room is you’re using that dysfunctional lens on the functional and universal aspects of childhood, child-rearing, parenting, growing up…” Here, he tells John about his own childhood in Dublin and his family’s eastern European Jewish background. He also talks about the links between his own love of Laurel and Hardy and the film Adam and Paul, about directing actors such as Pat Shortt in Garage and about why he put Michael Fassbender in a mask for most of the film Frank!
John Kelly meets actor, writer and director Olwen Fouéré, a theatre artist who in the last four decades has combined roles in the classics – from Greek tragedies to Shakespeare – and contemporary classics – starring in plays by writers like Mark O’Rowe and Marina Carr – with her own, highly experimental, work. This revealing and intimate interview opens with her looking back on her unusual childhood in Connemara: her parents were Breton separatists who were forced to flee France in the 40s because of their political views, and the young Foueré grew up between languages and cultures as a result. She reflects on a career that has been marked by the influences of Ireland, France and her Breton roots; her love of experimentation and compulsion to explore hitherto uncharted territory in her performances; how she developed her own, unique, movement-based style; and her many and varied collaborations with artists from different disciplines. Foueré is a true pioneer; a performer who, over a long career, has never ceased to explore, question and innovate. She is currently touring two, universally-acclaimed, solo shows that she has devised herself: Lessness by Samuel Beckett, and Riverrun, inspired by the voice of the river in Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce.
John Kelly meets Iarla Ó Lionaird, who has established himself as one of the foremost exponents of sean nós in the country.
John Kelly meets Brian Maguire, an Irish artist of international repute who is drawn to subjects on the margins of society, including convicted criminals in prison and residents in psychiatric institutions.
John Kelly talks to theatre director Louise Lowe, who since her first show, Tumbledown, in 2005, has been consistently breaking the rules of theatre.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John travels to London to meet with internationally renowned artist Tracey Emin.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John travels to Nice to meet with the critically acclaimed Irish writer Emma Donoghue.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John meets with legendary front man of Dexys Midnight Runners, Kevin Rowland, to talk about his career to date.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John travels to the studio of acclaimed contemporary Irish artist Alice Maher.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John meets up with the acclaimed Once and Sing Street director John Carney.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John travels to Nice to talk with the critically acclaimed Irish poet John Montague.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John meets with world-renowned Irish firm Grafton Architects, in order to find out more about their work.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John travels to Cork to meet with acclaimed Irish photographer John Minihan.
John Kelly talks with renowned Irish playwright Marina Carr, famed for her dramatic character driven plays such as By the Bog of Cats and On Raftery's Hill.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John meets with renowned television personality and writer Clive James.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. U2 bassist Adam Clayton discusses the band's punk influences, his love of art and how U2 can continue to be relevant.
John Kelly chats to avant-garde artist, composer, musician and film director Laurie Anderson in a frank and open discussion of her life and career.
John catches up with his good friend Seamus McGarvey, one of the world's leading cinematographers.
John meets actor and director Fiona Shaw to discuss her successful career in theatre and film.
John meets former creative director at Vogue in the US and ex-top model Grace Coddington.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. John interviews Jesse Jones, Ireland's representative at the prestigious Venice Biennale.
John interviews renowned Irish playwright Tom Murphy about his long, varied and often controversial career.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. In the final episode of the series, John talks to Game of Thrones actor and activist Liam Cunningham.
John Kelly meets key figures from the worlds of art and culture. In the first episode in the new series, John talks to author Roddy Doyle.
John Kelly talks to award-winning Irish novelist Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, and The Lesser Bohemians.
John Kelly talks to Belfast-based contemporary visual artist Colin Davidson.
Acclaimed pianist John O'Conor has given recitals in many of the world's most famous halls. He speaks to John Kelly about his life and career.
Nora Twomey has just returned from Hollywood. Her first feature length animation ‘The Breadwinner’ took the self confessed dreamer and school drop out all the way to the Oscars. That and her abilities as company director, animation artist, diplomat, salesperson and the two academy nominated productions the Kilkenny based studio ‘Cartoon Saloon’ she co directs has previously produced – ‘The Secret of Kells’ and ‘Song of the Sea.’
John Kelly meets Paula Meehan, one of the best known and distinctive voices in poetry. Her work is not only critically acclaimed but with poems such as The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks, has also entered the public consciousness.
John Kelly meets traditional and enterprising musician and concertina player, Cormac Begley
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John Kelly talks to Rachel Fallon, a visual artist whose work deals with women's relationships to society, motherhood and the domestic realm.
Clare Langan is an Irish film-maker with an international reputation. She has represented Ireland at several Biennales, and her films (and photographs) are held in a number of public and private collections throughout the world. Her collaborations with musicians like the late Johann Johannson reflect an openness to all the arts.
John Kelly meets classical composer and performer Jennifer Walshe, whose adventurous work makes her a unique and trailblazing figure in Irish music
Earlier this year, Patricia Hurl’s work was featured at the IMMA, and artist John Kelly interviews her about her work and how she actively tackles attitudes towards age and the work of older artists.
John Kelly meets Dublin-based German artist Vera Klute, who works in many disciplines including sculpture and painting, both portraits and landscapes. Her most recent public work, now in the Long Room in Trinity College, commemorates the chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin.
