In Cork this weekend? Check out the Street Performance World Championships. Last year was brilliant craic, even as a volunteer. This year is going to be even bigger taking over both Fitzgerald Park AND the Mardyke Sports Grounds. If you can’t make it we’ll be posting all sorts on the blog over the weekend so check it out at spwc.wordpress.com, Facebook and Twitter.

In Dublin for the weekend? Well why not give the Tweasurehunt a go. The last one was a great laugh and great exercise to boot.

Jason Santa Maria on his favourite typefaces.

Bringing psychology to the web design toolkit. Stephen Anderson‘s note cards are available to pre-order now.

Looking for a freelancer of any description? Check out endor.se

Seth Godin enthusiast? Join the masses for the “first ever unofficial official Seth Godin Linchpin worldwide Meetup” in Buskers, Temple Bar on Monday 14th at 7pm. Check in on FourSquare to receive a free drink on arrival.

And some light relief courtesy or Redmum…

The programme of gala concerts has just been announced and includes:

• Gala Opening Concert – Fleischmann Choir, Cork School of Music Symphony Orchestra and the Dachau Liedertafel Choir present Gala Fleischmann Concert
• National Chamber Choir of Ireland
• Anúna
• Fleischmann International Trophy Competition
• Closing Gala Concert

12 choirs have been selected from around the world to participate in the prestigious Fleischmann International Trophy Competition. Finland, Germany, Japan, Singapore, The Czech Republic, Norway, Slovenia, Philippines and Ireland will all be represented.

If you and your choir want to take part in National Competitions, you’ve got until January 31st to submit your application – all the info is here.

Looking forward to it already!

From the sound of musicians rehearsing floating down the hotel hallway to the mixture of ages and cultures of those attending the various gigs around the city it was a fantastic inspiring experience helped in no small way by the fact that Cork is by far the best city in Ireland (there will be an entire post about that alone!).

Highlights

YolanDa Brown

My favourite gig over the entire weekend was saxophonist YolanDa Brown on Sunday at The Savoy. I danced and swayed my way happily through set and can’t wait to get my mits on her album. She’s gorgeous, she’s energetic and a seriously talented musician. Herself and her band get top marks for their rendition of Summertime – a song that naturally appeared on setlists all through the weekend. If you’re not sure where to begin with trying your ear at some jazz, start with YolanDa.

Yurodny took to the stage of the beautiful Everyman Palace Theatre on Saturday afternoon. A lively and masterful performance from the Dublin-based ensemble of strings, wind and percussion with their Eastern European influences shining through.

On Saturday evening, the Monty Alexander Trio opened for Kurt Elling. A lovely mellow sound created with drum, bass and piano with Jamaican and American influences woven throughout, they delivered a superb set that seemed to please both the jazz connoisseur and the passing admirer. Notable moments included their gorgeous version of No Woman No Cry and a nice bit of improv featuring the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune.

My first adventures in swing dancing were interesting and lots of fun at Harlem Night 1930 where swing dance moves were demonstrated on stage to swing newbies (like myself). Most of the crowd were quite into their swing dancing and were amazing to watch in their gorgeous 30′s outfits.

‘Jazz mass‘ was probably one of the more bizarre experiences of the weekend with Danish band Bla Mondag and an African gospel choir interwoven into the service at the famous St. Anne’s Church at Shandon.

Lowlights

No festival with such a huge volume of stuff is without disappointments here and there. I hit mine on Saturday night at Kurt Elling at the Everyman. While it was billed as one of the ‘not to be missed’ gigs of the weekend, I felt it was more of an endurance than an experience. As I said in my tweets, his singing was flat and the improv too long-winded and uninspiring. Hats off to his grammy award-winning saxophonist – amazing musician – just a shame he didn’t see more of the limelight.

Despite the fact the festival is always held on the October Bank Holiday weekend, some things like hotel and drink prices seem to get rather inflated. For example, a paper cup of filter coffee at the Festival Club was a slightly saucy €3 and in another venue (can’t recall where, there were many!) a quarter bottle of red wine was €6.

So much to see, hear & do

Harlem Nights 1930

I quite honestly can’t recall all the bands and singers I listened to over the weekend, mainly with the sheer volume of stuff on at the Festival Club at the Metropole. The Festival Club consisted of 5 ballrooms in one huge hotel constantly rotating through a huge schedule of jazzy acts from lunchtime till the early hours. There almost wasn’t a door in the city be it theatre, pub, hotel or even shop that didn’t have some kind of jazz flowing out of it either!

Apart from the quick swing dancing lesson at the Firkin Crane, I didn’t get a chance to try out any of the workshops, masterclasses or check out the festival fringe events.

Buzzing
Cork is a fantastic city and the  Jazz Festival just seems to set the place alight. It was simply buzzing with energy, happy faces and tapping toes (and possibly the odd sore head too!). It’s a wonderful weekend, even for someone like me who has always been more of an ‘all genres of music’ enthusiast than a jazz fan.

Darragh has some superb videos and photos in the production pipeline, I’ll leave him to put into his own words how his first Cork Jazz Festival was suffice to say I think we’ll both be doing our best to get back there for the Cork Jazz Festival 2010!

Thanks to WHPR and Guinness for everything over the weekend and congrats to all involved on a wonderful festival.

Darragh has given a run down of some of the tasty jazzy action on offer over on his blog. I’m going to offer up some more practical advice, kind of like your mammy might do as you head off to your first music festival.

Plan

If you’re heading to Cork specifically to check out the festival, even at this late stage, try to get some kind of a plan together. There’s so much stuff on it can be a little overwhelming and like me last year, you can spend the weekend hopping from place to place hitting and missing the music. Have a look at what’s on and tick a few boxes.

Tickets

While a lot of the gigs are free, some still require tickets. Others you will need to purchase in advance either online or from the venues around town. Cork Jazz weekend is a very popular event and tickets get snapped up quickly so if you’ve your eye on a particular gig, get your tickets sorted in advance asap to avoid disappointment.

Shoes

Possibly one more for the attention of the ladies headed out this weekend The Jazz Festival gigs and events are spread out over many different venues all over Cork. It’s quite likely that over the weekend or even just one night, you’re going to be rambling from pillar to post around the city and those poor little tootsies are going to be under pressure. If you simply can’t do without your fabulous new stilettos maybe pop a wee pair of flats in the handbag too.

Oktoberfest

One of the highlights from last year (while not strictly under the Jazz Festival umbrella) was the Oktoberfest experience at the Franciscan Well pub & micro-brewery. Expect to find a fantastic selection of fine beers from the continent to delight your tastebuds while munching on something just as tasty from the yummy outdoor barbecue. Be warned however, it’s a popular spot and the good folk at the Franciscan regulate numbers through the evening so if you want in, be there by early evening.

I’ll be hopping about from gig to gig over the weekend and hopefully calling into the Oktoberfest for a Tweet-up too! Keep an eye on #corkjazz on Twitter for photos and updates. See you out there!

This festival first came to my attention somehow around this time last year right after the 2008 festival had just wrapped up in Cork. That in mind I was determined not to miss out this year so I headed for Cork on Saturday to sample some of the choral action to be had in the country’s fairest city. 

I went along to the Fleischmann Trophy competiton on Saturday, the major prize on offer at the festival. The calibre of performances from the choirs was amazing as was the range of people involved on stage. Personal highlights included ‘Ett liv for mig’ performed by Finnish group Chamber Choir Gallerie and ‘Elijah Rock’ by Irish choir Codetta. Gothenburg Youth Choir gave a fantastic energetic performance to end the evening including a finger-clicking version of ‘Chili Con Carne‘. For something a bit lighter and to satisfy my more jazzy & modern tendencies in all things choral I popped into the National Competition for Light, Jazz and Popular Music on Sunday afternoon where some delightful performances given. Highlights for me were ‘The Impossible Dream‘ by Portadown Male Voice Choir, ‘The Teddy Bears Picnic‘ by Moy Singers from Co.Mayo and ‘Unchained Melody‘ by City of Cork Male Voice Choir. The closing gala concert on Sunday gave many of the choirs who took part in the Fleischmann Trophy competition a chance to let their hair down & have some fun and that they did for a really awesome evening of music. Sadly the camera battery failed to hold out for long enough to capture them all. Probably the most bizarre performance of the festival for me was Warsaw School of Economics Choir with their take on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit‘. Highlights for me were the Slovenia’s Ptuj Male Chamber Choir take on ‘Happy Together‘, Cois Claddaigh with ‘Loch Lomond‘, Codetta once again with ‘Elijah Rock‘, Cantilena Children’s Choir singing ‘Molly Malone‘, Fleischmann Trophy winners Kammerchor I Vocalisti with the hair-raising ‘Pseudo-Yoik‘ and finally Brigham Young University Singers (U.S.A.) with their jaw-dropping rendition of ‘Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine‘. I’m delighted to see they’re on tour in the UK & Ireland over the next 2 weeks. This is deserving of a blog post all by itself so watch this space

Overall, it was a fantastic experience in Cork, if too short. I’d love to have taken in more of the festival – there were so many different performances on offer over the 5 days and many of them free of charge too! At the risk of sounding cliched or corny, it really hit me how music can bring people from all walks of life & parts of the world together in a happy, warm, positive & supportive collective. There was such a buzz about City Hall for the performances, all the choirs cheering each other on & getting along famously & enjoying each others’ culture. 

I’ve got a bunch of videos from the Closing Gala Concert and the National Competition for Light, Jazz and Popular Music on YouTube – apologies for the awful quality of the camera work but it’s getting a taste of the sound that matters! I can’t wait for next year

Some icons from 'Handy' icon set

So here we are, 1st of May, first ‘proper’ bank holiday of the year already upon us. Anyone else scared/shocked at how quick the year is passing?

A businessman in the UK by the name of Mr.Hindley has bought the cottage featured in Withnail & I and promised to restore it for fans of the film – awesome!

‘Handy’ icon set free for personal & commercial use at Webdesigner Depot

If I haven’t spammed you already, X Communications are now Facebook-ing here.

Future of Web Design is currently on in London & the very talented Sabrina Dent was up yesterday giving her talk ‘Throwing Client Collaboration Out the Window: The Stalinist Web Design Model’. She’s back blogging again which is awesome & has a post up about her FOWD experience.

Some messing on Culch.ie yesterday has resulted in the launch of a new campaign site.

I’m off to Cork tomorrow to soak up the delights of the 55th Cork International Choral Festival. I’m planning to meet some of the organisers to find out more about the history of the festival & chat about getting the event out into the great wide interweb next year with blogging & all sorts of madness. If you’re about Cork over the next few days & are free for a coffee, drop me a tweet or an email or if you have my number that works too!

Song for the day is Did Ye Get Healed by Van Morrison, have a listen & get yer fingers clickin’: http://blip.fm/~5c2cu

Happy long weekend tout le monde

Warm-up time for the 55th Cork International Choral Festival

“4,600 voices, 85 performances, from 22 countries for 5 days in Cork.”

That’s the 55th Cork International Choral Festival which kicks of this coming Wednesday and runs until Sunday May 3rd. There’s a lovely variety of performances on offer from chamber groups to children’s choirs and numerous competitive events in between including the prestigious Fleischmann International Trophy Competition which takes places on Saturday.

Some performances that grabbed my attention on browsing over the brochure that may tickle your choral fancy:

• Opening Gala Concert with Cork Symphony Orchestra: A Sea Symphony
• Shandon Sunrise with Cathal O’Baoill & Gothenburg Youth Choir
• The National Chamber Choir of Ireland: From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
• Fleischmann International Trophy Competition
• Closing Gala Concert

Most if not all ticketed events are on sale via the online booking system, over the phone on + 353 (21) 4501673 or in person at the Everyman Palace Theatre box office. Family rates, group rates and season rates are also available. Check out the website at www.corkchoral.ie.

Across from City Hall on Lapp’s Quay there will be a Festival Food Fair on the boardwalk from 10am to 4pm on Saturday while The Clarion Hotel will be satisfying your afternoon & late night choral needs with performances in the Atrium on Saturday & Sunday afternoons from 2.30pm – 6pm and again from 10pm – 2am. 

Looking forward to it!

 City Hall, Cork.

So I have a little prediciment that I need help with, specifically from someone lovely living in Cork city who will be around about for a while on the following times on the May bank holiday weekend to hang on to a set of keys for me:

•  Evening of Friday May 1st
• Late morning/early lunchtime of Saturday May 2nd

Why? I plan to go to Cork for the Internation Choral Festival & had hoped to stay with my sister who lives opposite the School of Music. As luck would have it, she has to travel to Clare to play at a church wedding that’s happening Saturday morning. All her mates are out of town studying like mad for exams that weekend so we’re stuck for a way to get her apartment keys from her to myself.

I sadly don’t have any connections left in Cork myself so I’m wondering if there’s some lovely person/people out there who could save my bacon and hang on to keys for me on Friday evening and I’ll collect them on Saturday morning/lunchtime?

If you think you can be my little saviour, drop a comment here or an email to cloudsteph@gmail.com. Thanks