Bronagh Gallagher – SOLD OUT

Bronagh Gallagher is considered one of Ireland’s leading actors and voices of soul music and is deeply respected for both the quality of her song writing and her stellar live performances.

From the beginning of her acting career at age 17, as Bernie, one of the backing singers in Alan Parker’s The Commitments, Bronagh has appeared in countless films including Pulp Fiction, Star Wars, Sherlock Homes, The Personal History of David Copperfield by Armando Iannucci and award-winning TV dramas such as Jimmy Mc Govern’s The Street, and The Accused.

She has also appeared in London’s West End, The Royal Court, The National Theatre and Broadway Theatre Productions including Complicité’s Street of Crocodiles, Bob Dylan & Conor Mc Pherson’s award-winning musical Girl from The North Country, Sky’s hit TV show Brassic, and her lead role in the multi-award winning Bump Along the Way.

Alongside her acting career, Bronagh writes and produces her own music with her band and runs her own independent label, Salty Dog Records. She has released three albums to date and a recent highly praised EP Witch it Up.

Bronagh has just completed filming of Joshua Oppenheimer’s movie THE END, and is currently filming Series 6 of Sky TV’s comedy drama Brassic.

Tickets £20.00

Doors 7.30pm, Mostly Standing

‘One of the purest, clearest talents I know – a fabulous singer, bursting with raw Irish soul. Striking and original songs and an effortlessly brilliant band’ –BRIAN ENO

‘Swaggering like Carole King in her golden years’ –Q Magazine

‘Bronagh Gallagher has several strings to her creative bow, including a talent for penning thundering power ballads and soulful musings.’ –THE IRISH TIMES

With generous support from the Dormant Accounts Fund NI

BC Camplight (Full Band Show)

Is there a curse that says Brian ‘BC Camplight’ Christinzio cannot move forward without being knocked back? That the greatest material is born out of emotional trauma?

Whilst making his new album The Last Rotation Of Earth, Christinzio’s relationship with his fiancé crumbled after nine inseparable years. The album follows this break-up amid long-term struggles with addiction and declining mental health.

The outcome is an extraordinary record, with Christinzio describing it as “more cinematic, sophisticated and nuanced than anything I’ve done before.” He goes on to describe how the separation altered his creative focus and caused him to “scrap 95% of what I’d already recorded”, finishingThe Last Rotation Of Earth in two months and making what he believes to his most vital album.

That Christinzio has bettered his previous album is an achievement, given that Shortly After Takeoff received the best reviews of his life. “A masterpiece,” said The Guardian’s 5 star review, “a half hour or so that roils with anxiety, stuns with beauty and, occasionally, provokes laughter.” Even then, fate intervened when the album was released in April 2020, just as Covid and lockdown kicked in, so he was unable to tour the record until late 2021.

Talk about tempting fate. But it’s true to say that Christinzio has made his best music under immense duress, andThe Last Rotation Of Earth is an inimitable work; a heady, heavy slice of lustrous hooks, moods bursting with classical sophistication and fractured paranoia.

Christinzio’s world-class live shows are an exhilarating, phrenetic and exhausting experience for both performer and audience. Headlining Bella Union’s 25th birthday show in November 2022, he pulled a couch on to the stage, as a prop to reinforce the idea of music and performance-as-therapy; his between-songs patter is equally charged and self-deprecating. The dynamic of light and shade also impacts the music.

So, what does lie ahead? And can Christinzio ever trust the future? When he began releasing records in 2005, backed by members who would eventually join The War On Drugs, and guest-starring on Sharon Van Etten’s Epic album, the future looked bright. “But if I’d stayed,” he once mused, “I’d be dead. Period.”

So Christinzio took a friend’s advice to escape his alcohol and drug addictions in Philly and move to Manchester, leading to his debut album for Bella Union,How To Die In The North; though just two days before it was released in 2014, he was deported .

Back in the UK (with an Italian passport), he made Deportation Blues but just days before it was released in 2016, his father died, triggering a breakdown that inspired Shortly After Takeoff, the last part of what Christinzio calls his Manchester Trilogy.

So, he must begin again; new album, newly single, clean slate. And without tempting fate again, before the last rotation of earth, BC Camplight and his band will tourThe Last Rotation Of Earth, including his biggest headline shows to date, at London Shepherd’s Bush Empire and Manchester’s Albert Hall. “It’s wonderful to realise the songs in front of that many people,” says Christinzio, “I know I’m never going to be Coldplay, but ten years ago, I was certain I wouldn’t make music again.”

Ten years later Christinzio is still making important music, still channelling the forces that have beleaguered him and making the most honest and candid work he can, because anything else wouldn’t be BC Camplight.

Doors 7.30pm | Mostly Standing

Jon Ronson in Conversation

Kathy Clugston in conversation with Jon Ronson on his books, writing career and podcasts.

Jon Ronson is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker whose works include So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test, Them: Adventures with Extremists, Lost at Sea and The Men Who Stare At Goats.

The Psychopath Test spent more than a year on the UK bestseller list. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is frequently cited as having kickstarted the conversation about the perils of social media shaming.

Jon is currently working on the second season of his acclaimed, award winning BBC podcast Things Fell Apart – named by the Observer as the number one audio show of 2021.

Before that came two Audible Original audio series, The Butterfly Effect (2017) and The Last Days of August (2019). Both went straight to number one in the US and UK audiobook charts, and were named by multiple critics as two of the best podcasts of recent years.

Jon’s original screenplays include Okja, which he co-wrote with Bong-Joon Ho, and Frank, which he co-wrote with Peter Straughan. His many UK documentaries include Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes and The Secret Rulers of the World.

He lives in New York.

This event is supported with Dormant Accounts NI Funding.

John Francis Flynn

John Francis Flynn will release a new album Look Over the Wall, See the Sky on Nov. 10th, following on from his critically acclaimed debut album and accompanying live performances.

Look Over the Wall, See the Sky picks up where I Would Not Live Always left off. John masterfully unpicks traditional songs and rearranges them with an emotional force. They float in a surreal space between the past and the present, the analog and the digital, between love and tragedy.

The unconventional use of instruments and jagged arrangements gives the work a magnetism by drawing you into its curious orbit of experimental folk. Look Over The Wall, See The Sky is a re-imagining of traditional Irish music: powerful, hopeful and free.

John Francis Flynn is a singer and multi-instrumentalist who creates contemporary music using traditional and folk material. His debut album I Would Not Live Always was released on Rough Trade imprint River Lea Records in 2020, earning rave reviews and winning 2 awards at the RTE Folk Awards.

‘I Would Not Live Always offers a singular and striking clarity of vision.’ **** UNCUT

‘John Francis Flynn’s ‘My Son Tim’ Is An Extraordinary Piece Of Music’ CLASH

‘like a threatening thunderhead perforated with golden shafts of sunlight: lysergic synth lines, intermittent bursts of overdriven guitar, a clarinet saturated in tape delay and a treated tin whistle disrupt the atmosphere of these old songs without ever diminishing their power.’ **** THE GUARDIAN

Sooz Kempner: Y2K Woman

The award-winning, viral sensation returns with a brand-new hour following her sell-out 2022 run.

As the year 2000 approached, Sooz was about to turn 15 and the PlayStation 2 was about to launch… it was a new beginning for the world. But with the Millennium Bug, was the world also about to end!?

Now, almost a quarter of a century later, things feel eerily similar… New millennium, video games, Alanis Morissette… a show for anyone who remembers the year 2000 or had big dreams as a kid.

‘Kempner has funny bones’ **** (Scotsman). 

‘Brilliant’ (LA Times).

Wild Child

Formed in Austin, Texas by main songwriters and lead vocalists Alexander Beggins and Kelsey Wilson, Wild Child emerged with their first album, Pillow Talk, in October 2011. The band quickly earned a reputation for spirited live shows and won multiple awards at the SXSW Festival in March of 2013.

Their second LP, October 2013’s The Runaround, featured the viral hit Crazy Bird, which led to U.S. television appearances on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and CBS This Morning.

Wild Child released their third album, Fools, in October 2015. It spent a week at number 14 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart. The following June, they drew a crowd of 25,000 at a local radio station’s outdoor music series.

Another album, Expectations, appeared in February 2018 and reached as high as number six on the Heatseekers chart as well as landing in the Top 20 of the Billboard Independent and Vinyl Albums charts.

During the five years between Expectations and their next album, End of the World, Wild Child were sidelined from touring with the rest of the music industry due to the pandemic, endured the Texas ice storm of 2021 (the inspiration for the title track) and established their own label, Reba’s Ranch Records.

End of the World arrived on the label in March 2023 and has been met with widespread critical acclaim. A live act not to be missed.

Sam Baker

Sam Baker is a lyric writer, artist, and survivor. His songs are stories of everyday people facing everyday challenges: a young Mennonite welder who finds love, a ditch digger supporting his family, a veteran grappling with post-war life, a single mother driving around with a car full of baby junk, a widower writing ‘her’ name in the sand, and a straight-haired orphan in a house full of curls. They are survivors. Like Sam.

In 1986 Sam was on a train for Machu Picchu when a bomb exploded in the carriage he was riding in. Seven died. Through a series of miracles, and the help of everyday people doing their best–his angels–he survived.

Physical recovery was hard.  Emotional recovery harder. Melody came to him–compelled him to turn an old guitar upside down so his gnarled hands could play.

Slowly, the words came–one true line–“Sitting on the train to Machu Picchu, the passenger car explodes.”  He made a record. Then another. There were glowing reviews, more records, awards in Rolling Stone; sold-out shows in Europe, Canada, and the US and songs in TV shows; and an hour with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Sam uses his art to tell his story–whether from a symphony in Oregon, an art gallery in Santa Fe, a large theatre in Kansas City, a small room in The Netherlands, or a song-writer retreat with soldiers. He travels the world sharing his songs, grateful for each day, helping us see the beauty in little things and hope for things to come.

Simultaneously beautiful and broken…Sam Baker is an artist worth waiting for.’ – NPR

‘The Bard of the Workaday World’ – WALL STREET JOURNAL

‘Maybe the most captivating songwriter in America.’ – LONE STAR MUSIC

Sam Baker is an island of warmth and hope in dangerous times.’ – NEON FILLER

John Craigie

Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies.

Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.

After selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.

The album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things.

So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.

During this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco. “I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.

Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause.

Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.”

Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact. In the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt.

Hollie McNish: The Lobster Tour with Michael Pedersen

After a run of sold out shows up and down the UK, Hollie McNish is back with a brand new book, Lobster and other things I’m learning to love. A Sunday Times bestselling writer whose live readings are not to be missed, expect strong language and adult content, gift-wrapped in gorgeously crafted poetry.

In Lobster, Hollie brings her much-loved style to questions offriendship, flags and newborns, clocks, cocks and volvos, shining a ridiculous and beautifully poetic lens upon all those things we have been taught to hate, and which we might just learn to love again. Here, she will be joined by fellow poet Michael Pedersen reading from his latest brilliant books The Cat Prince and Boy Friends.

Adult content warning 14+ / Book signing after the gig

“Makes me cry and howl with laughter” – Paapa Essiedu

“Her writing is sublime” – Ellie Taylor

“like Pam Ayres on acid” – Lemn Sissay

“One of the best poets we have”. – Matt Haig

“Rubbish” – The Telegraph

About the Author
Hollie McNish is a poet and author based between Glasgow and Cambridge. She was the first poet to record at Abbey Road Studios, London and won the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir – Nobody Told Me -of which The Scotsman stated ‘The World Needs this Book’.

She has published four further collections of poetry – Papers, Cherry Pie, Plum and Slug, which was a Sunday Times bestseller.Her new book, Lobster, and other things I’m learning to love is out now. She loves writing.

Supported By

dormant embrace FHM

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The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and Out To Lunch are annual festivals of music, comedy, theatre, art and literature which take place in January and May in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

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