Events

Turrisi and Ellis are joined by saxophone virtuoso Nick Roth to form TRE, an original trio re-imagining both original compositions and Mediterranean modal music through contemporary chamber music, jazz and improvisation.

Crossing musical boundaries as effortlessly as the River Nore, contemporary classical violinists/traditional fiddlers Maria Ryan and Lucia Mac Partlin – half of Strung ensemble, who play a lunchtime concert in St John’s – reassemble on the other side of Kilkenny to explore their Irish traditional influences in Cleere’s.

Join artists Kathy Prendergast and Chris Leach as they discuss their joint Butler Gallery exhibition, Cities of the World.

This event is free but ticketed.

The Fews Ensemble – Northern Ireland’s outstanding chamber music group – returns to the Festival with a pair of lunchtime concerts exploring a diverse range of works.

The first concert focuses on Messiaen’s visionary Quartet for the End of Time. Written while the composer was a prisoner of war in Germany, and first performed by his fellow prisoners, it is now considered one of his most important works.

In this storytelling show, Francesco Turrisi explores his Sicilian roots through original piano compositions that reflect on the idea of migration: both of his family away from the island, and the more recent arrival of migrants from North Africa.

The show features not only Francesco’s own voice and music, but also the voices of Sicilian people recorded during the 1940s and 50s, as well as pre-recorded poetry read in Sicilian by Ester Pantano and Nino Provenzano, and in English by celebrated actor John Turturro.

Ambition, greed, betrayal, cruelty and revenge flow through Agamemnon’s family in this epic Greek myth. Relationships mediated through murder. The eponymous heroine left to eat with the dogs. Elektra is an opera steeped in derangement and blood lust.

With searing vocal lines and orchestra aflame, Strauss pushes the boundaries of his musical art to depict the psychological distress of a world in which it’s anyone normal who stands out as strange.

William Byrd was one of the most important English composers of the Renaissance, renowned for his brilliantly inventive music, but his courage is sometimes overlooked. A Catholic at the court of Elizabeth I, Byrd was obliged to write music for the Anglican Church, yet at the height of his fame he defied his paymasters, composing three Latin masses and giving up his post to join a community of Catholic recusants.

Arvo Pärt is one of the most influential and widely performed living composers today, known for his highly original ‘tintinnabuli’ musical language, inspired by the resonances of church bells.

To celebrate Pärt’s 90th birthday, Paul Hillier – who is widely regarded as one of the world's leading interpreters of the composer’s work – returns to Kilkenny to lead Chamber Choir Ireland in this celebration of Pärt’s career featuring some of his best-loved pieces.

Turrisi reimagines 17th-century Italian music in the context of contemporary European jazz, with help from Derek Whyte on bass, Matt Jacobson on drums and Italian trumpet virtuoso Fulvio Sigurta.

This second concert spans the last hundred years, featuring work by Shostakovich and Joan Trimble, one of the most distinguished Ulster musicians of the 20th century.

Programme II

Dmitri Shostakovich Trio No. 2 in E minor
Joan Trimble Phantasy Trio

Fiddle player Colm Mac Con Iomaire is a sonic storyteller bringing the essence of the Irish musical tradition into a new cinematic space. He kicks off this final concert with a solo performance before being joined by Kate Ellis and Rakhi and Simmy Singh, three musicians steeped in tradition but driven by curiosity, to form an alternative string quartet that draws on new compositions, improvisation and fragments of traditional and contemporary music.

fallow is an exciting new bi-annual literary journal featuring fiction, poetry and essays from some of the finest writers working today. Join editor Ian Malaney, poet Eva Griffin and novelist Oisín Fagan, along with other contributors, to celebrate and explore the first issue.

Patrick Barrett, the Irish Youth Choir's Chorus Director, is one of the leading choral conductors in Ireland and the UK, but though he was born in Kilkenny this concert marks his first performance here.

The programme boasts a wealth of contemporary Irish and international composers and features new work from Rhona Clarke as well as a collaboration between poet and performing artist Samuel Yakura and composer Seán Doherty. Don’t miss these beautiful works performed by a new generation of talented singers.

Created by multi-award-winners John McIlduff and Brian Irvine, Where We Bury the Bones is an intimate and challenging work of contemporary music theatre.It begins with the discovery of a single bone, unearthed during the archaeological excavations that preceded the redevelopment of the Abbey Quarter in Kilkenny. From there it evolves into the unfolding of human civilisation: its religion, its industry, its skateboarders.Where We Bury the Bones developed out of Carnival of Shadows: #1 Possible Human, a multi-sensory installation presented at KAF 2021. Combining music, voice, archive text, theatre, film and movement, this new work explores the way in which the stories we choose to tell often reveal more about ourselves than history itself.

Adam Buttimer is one of the most exciting young tuba players in Ireland. A winner of numerous awards, including the RDS Music Bursary in 2024, he has performed with everyone from the National Symphony Orchestra to his own quintet Banshee Brass.

Haunting, wondrous and deeply unsettling, We Who Live Under Heaven merges live performance, electronic music and cutting-edge technology to create a startlingly intimate encounter with the unknown.

At the heart of this immersive experience is a being held in captivity. Its mournful song – composed by Roger Doyle and performed by countertenor Morgan Crowley – invites audiences to imagine a world where connection transcends difference.

Led by their Olivier Award-winning Artistic Director, Peter Whelan, the Irish Baroque Orchestra comes return to the Festival to perform one of Handel’s finest vocal works, Alexander’s Feast.

Dramatic, evocative and heroic, Alexander's Feast is a musical ode: a masterful blend of storytelling and vivid musical imagery that recounts an episode from the life of Alexander the Great.

The Guardian named Anna B Savage as ‘one to watch’ back in 2023, and with good reason: since her debut album A Common Turn, Savage has gone from strength to strength, supporting St Vincent and The Staves, touring with Father John Misty and earning rave reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone.

Leading countertenor (and member of Chamber Choir Ireland) Mark Chambers joins lutenist Toby Carr for this delightful programme featuring works by the great English composers John Dowland and John Danyel (whose piece ‘Like as the Lute Delights’ provided the inspiration for the title), and the celebrated contemporary composer Nico Muhly, whose eclectic output includes several gorgeous works for lute, along with the world premiere of a new work by Joby Talbot.

Pioneering electronic composer Roger Doyle joins director Jo Mangan to discuss his extraordinary body of work in theatre, film and dance, including their immersive new multimedia collaboration We Who Live Under Heaven.

Last year, poet in residence Martina Evans gave a reading from her award-winning narrative poem The Coming Thing, a ‘mind-spinning’ epic that follows a young woman’s life amid the punk scene in 1980s Cork.

This year, Evans returns to the Festival to offer a preview of her new work, Drunken Driving, a sequel to The Coming Thing set in Pentonville Prison and due to be published by Carcanet next year.

The Irish Chamber Orchestra with leader Katherine Hunka returns to Kilkenny with an atmospheric programme of nocturnal music led by their new Artistic Partner, Henning Kraggerud.

Artistic Director of the Arctic Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra in Norway, Kraggerud is a staggeringly accomplished composer, violinist, arranger and improviser who has worked with many of the world’s leading orchestras.

Button accordionist Danny O’Mahony is a multiple All-Ireland Fleadh champion renowned for his rich, emotive playing and deep appreciation for traditional music. A versatile artist as committed to innovation as conservation, he recently collaborated with experimental theatre company Brokentalkers on their multimedia show Bellow, and he performs with Crash Ensemble in Custom of the Coast.

Michael Gallen is best known as a composer of outstanding choral and orchestral works for RTÉ Concert Orchestra but this concert offers a chance to see him working on a much more intimate scale with his new project Sudden Wells, a four-piece band that combines the lyrical quality of Gallen’s singing and piano-playing with pulsating arrangements. With a debut album due out later this year, this intimate gig is a wonderful chance to experience Gallen’s thrilling new sound.

Join composer/director Michael Gallen and his co-librettist, poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin, as they discuss their new opera The Curing Line, which won the 2025 Fedora Prize (the world’s largest award for new opera) and premieres at the Festival next year.

In this special concert, newly-minted consort ensemble The Earls of Ormond (featuring Festival stalwarts Laoise O’Brien and Malcolm Proud) explores Margaret’s life through the music of the period, including repertoire from the English Court and the Franco-Flemish School.

Lost Vision is a salvaged CRT wall (a video wall made of old cathode ray TVs) created by artist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Simon O’Reilly. With projection mapping by Crosby Dunkley, the installation features short films submitted by the public, accompanied by live music and some of Ireland top spoken word artists.

What does it mean to write hidden or obscured histories? Using as a springboard the words of Patricia Smith who indicated that ‘the job of the poet is to be a witness’, award-winning poet and librettist Annemarie Ní Churreáin reads from Ghostgirl – her pamphlet commission responding to archival records of the Stranorlar Mother & Baby Home, Donegal. Ghostgirl was described by Poetry Ireland Review as ‘one of the most important poetry pamphlets published in contemporary Ireland, the kind of text you could invoke as evidence for poetry as a constructive, transformative force.’

Martin Hayes rounds off the Marble City Sessions in style with another eclectic gathering of leading Festival artists and musicians, including Cormac McCarthy, Aoife Ní Bhriaín, Danny O’Mahony, Kate Ellis, Francesco Turrisi, Maria Ryan, Lucia Mac Partlin and singer Síle Denvir, all celebrating 11 days of musical innovation, collaboration and connections.

After a decade spent in upstate NY, releasing albums and touring, Lorkin O’Reilly moved to Dublin in 2022 to start a new musical chapter. Joining forces with Californian banjo player Jonny Pickett, O’Reilly formed DUG, a band whose sound draws inspiration from both Irish and American traditional music. Their first single was shortlisted for two Grammy nominations, and with an album eagerly awaited this year, DUG bring their unique transatlantic sound – enhanced by a full band – to the Set.

Paula Meehan is one of Ireland’s most revered poets. A former Ireland Professor of Poetry, she is celebrated for her uncompromising engagement with the politics of gender and class, and for work that combines lyrical intensity with emotional insight, exploring themes of inheritance, nature and time. For this event Meehan reads a mix of old and new work, including poems from her most recent collection, The Solace of Artemis.