Deaglan
New Member
Primal Scream, Bon Iver, Spiritualized and David Gray are among the sensational acts featured on this year’s phenomenal line-up for The Festival Big Top at the Galway Arts Festival. Less than two weeks from today will see the stellar international acts decamp to the stunning venue at Fisheries Field, each to perform their only Irish show of this year.
Galway Arts Festival Big Top will host Primal Scream, Spiritualized and David Holmes in a sensational triple -bill on July 24. Nigerian legend Femi Kuti, the standard bearer for Nigeria's funky, feisty afrobeat sound will also play Live at the Festival Big Top on July 22.
Galway Arts Festival takes place from 13th -26th July and has already announced Festival highlights - Bon Iver, David Gray, David Kitt, The Kronos Quartet and British superstar David Hockney as part of the visual arts programme. Galway Arts Festival 2009 is set to be the ultimate summer getaway for the festival chic set with a line-up Live at the Festival Big Top that sparkles with sensational musical talent. Galway Arts Festival will up the festival fun factor, featuring an inspiring mix of the very best in alternative culture with an eclectic blend of stompingly good tunes from rising stars, established favourites and surprise collaborations.
DAVID GRAY, DAVID KITT 21ST JULY
Galway Arts Festival are delighted to welcome back Festival luminary David Gray, one of the most influential and successful British singer-songwriters of the past decade. He will perform songs from his soon to be released new album along with some of his most popular songs from his multi-platinum selling recordings. Famed for his electric and unforgettable live performances, Gray takes to the Festival Big Top stage on Tuesday July 21st. David Gray will be supported by Ireland’s David Kitt, whose home produced album Nightsaver has been critically acclaimed as “his most accomplished album in years, a beguiling blend of electronic and indie rock”. This double bill promises to inject some Galway Arts Festival free spirit into the stratosphere this summer.
FEMI KUTI, THE POSITIVE FORCE 22ND JULY
Femi Kuti returned to the world stage late last year with a powerful and timeless new album, Day by Day, which continues to explore and push back the frontiers of Afrobeat, the super funky amalgam of Black Power politics, jazz and traditional rhythms. Whilst always respecting his musical heritage having inherited his famous father’s mantle - Fela Kuti, a giant of African music - Femi has refined more than twenty years of Afrobeat with soul-jazz nuances that are entirely his own.
“A maestro of dance, rhythm and melody.” Rolling Stone
Mercuryboy inc, the Irish media house and visuals collective, will also bring their styles, smooth graphics and video performance art to this years Galway Arts festival, appearing at the Festival Big Top on Wednesday 22 July. Regulars at festivals like The Big Chill, Global Gathering and The Electric Picnic, and along side artists like The Orb, Ellen Alien, Carl Cox, Les Bien, Eric Marillo; Mercury Boy will provide their unique visual show with a very special guest DJ that will not disappoint
BON IVER, ALELA DIANE 23RD JULY
Phenomenal American folk singer BON IVER announces his only Irish show of 2009 at the Big Top, Galway this summer.
Phenomenal American folk singer BON IVER announces his only Irish show of 2009 at the Big Top, Galway this summer.
Having sold out both Tripod and National Stadium in Dublin last autumn, the sublime Bon Iver (aka Justin Vernon) plays his biggest Irish show yet as part of the run of shows at the Big Top as part of Galway Arts Festival.
The unique setting of Galway City is of peculiar personal significance to an extraordinary talent, who returns to the city for the first time since a visit in 1999, when Galway was the only place outside North America Vernon had ever spent significant time in. It remained the only foreign city he’d lived in up ‘til the time of his debut European show in May 2008.
Employed his first-visit-around selling phones in an Eircell shop on Eyre Square, Vernon returns to his former youthful haunts for the first time as one of the greatest international musical acts to emerge in recent years.
Bon Iver’s stunning breakthrough debut For Emma, Forever Ago is universally acknowledged as being among the very top albums to be released last year, making every significant list of best albums of 2008. His latest breathtaking EP Bloodbank was released in January.
PRIMAL SCREAM, SPIRITUALIZED, DAVID HOLMES 24TH JULY
Primal Scream has inspired a generation of fans. Winners of the first ever Mercury Music Prize for 1991’s Screamadelica, they changed the face of British pop music with their fusion of dance, dub, techno, acid house and rock. The band set the tone for a musical style that would define the 80s and 90s with a succession of hit songs including Movin on Up, Loaded and Gets Your Rocks Off. Always teetering on the brink, always dangerous, Primal Scream retains the ability to shock and delight.
Twelve years ago, Spiritualized set the world alight with their stunning album Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, a space-rock odyssey of epic soundscapes, Afro-American gospel and blues. Since then writer, composer, singer and only constant member of the band, Jason Pierce, has continued to push the boundaries of experimental music incorporating shoe- gazing styles with blues, soul and gospel. Inspired by a serious illness in 2005, main man Pierce created the recently-released Songs in A&E (2008),
One of his most gorgeous albums yet.” NME
Primal Scream has inspired a generation of fans. Winners of the first ever Mercury Music Prize for 1991’s Screamadelica, they changed the face of British pop music with their fusion of dance, dub, techno, acid house and rock. The band set the tone for a musical style that would define the 80s and 90s with a succession of hit songs including Movin on Up, Loaded and Gets Your Rocks Off. Always teetering on the brink, always dangerous, Primal Scream retains the ability to shock and delight.
Twelve years ago, Spiritualized set the world alight with their stunning album Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, a space-rock odyssey of epic soundscapes, Afro-American gospel and blues. Since then writer, composer, singer and only constant member of the band, Jason Pierce, has continued to push the boundaries of experimental music incorporating shoe- gazing styles with blues, soul and gospel. Inspired by a serious illness in 2005, main man Pierce created the recently-released Songs in A&E (2008),
One of his most gorgeous albums yet.” NME
Belfast born DJ maestro David Holmes will complete this highly anticipated triple bill. His new album Holy Pictures was release to critical acclaim last year and he has spent the last year in an eclectic series of exciting new ventures and collaborations in music and film. He created the score for Hunger, the debut feature film from Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen that was awarded the prestigious Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. As remixer he has reworked tracks by U2 , Doves, The Manic Street Preachers , Primal Scream , Page and Plant, and Ice Cube . He has a creative relationship with Stephen Soderbergh and has worked on Out of Sight, Oceans Eleven and Oceans Twelve.
Dance, theatre, spectacle, visual art and music from around the world, all feature strongly in this year’s Galway Arts Festival which takes place from 13th -26th July. The Festival has just announced a selected number of highlights from this year’s programme. Galway Arts Festival 2009 is set to be the ultimate summer getaway for the festival chic set with a line-up Live at the Festival Big Top that sparkles with sensational musical talent. Galway Arts Festival will up the festival fun factor, featuring an inspiring mix of the very best in alternative culture with an eclectic blend of stompingly good tunes from rising stars, established favourites and surprise collaborations.
Pitched minutes from Galway city centre on the banks of the River Corrib, the Festival Big Top will take prime position at the Fisheries Field – the perfect lounge location for summer evenings. Galway Arts Festival is now in its 32nd year and has become Ireland’s signature Arts Festival and an international force to be reckoned with
