Appearing at the Vivienne Guinness-curated Festival of Writing and Ideas in County Carlow next month in Ireland are singer Christine Tobin's No Strangers Here and peerless restaurant critic pianist Jay Rayner to perform with his wife the singer Pat Gordon-Smith as a duo.
Also taking to the stand as a duo are guitarist Phil Robson with bassist Dan Bodwell in the festival club marquee hosted by this Borris House gathering located in a country house near the tiny town of Borris.
Robson's recent Portrait in Extreme was a a welcome reminder of this now County Roscommon-based Derby-born player's John Scofield-and-beyond artistry revealed in intimate circumstances.
The festival lists a bountiful array of stellar speakers in its main programme and who include Ireland's most revered political journalist and author Fintan O'Toole who memorably delivered a fine talk on the theme of mortality and death in the work of Samuel Beckett during the 2014 Happy Days festival.
Also to deliver a talk are the extraordinary Booker prize-winning author of The Gathering Anne Enright of misery memoir renown and Enright's fellow novelist the comic writer Roddy Doyle who also won the Booker for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and yet who is most beloved for The Commitments – favourite character hereabouts the beautiful dreamer, Jimmy Rabbitte.
Christine Tobin, top, is Ireland's greatest jazz singer and an artist who possesses a strong literary sensibility most evident on her fine W. B. Yeats album Sailing To Byzantium and the exuberant Paul Muldoon-themed Pelt. It is a coup and a blessing for any festival to put the singer on. Avant violinist Cora Venus Lunny is in the singer's band and who in 2019 proved impressive playing a duo with Izumi Kimura at the Jazz Connective showcase in Dublin. Rayner is amusing live for his between-song chats and is a talented shall-we-say tinkler to boot. He quipped the time that we saw him at Kings Place some years ago ''If you know nothing about jazz I'm brilliant; if you know something, thanks for coming.'' Borris House runs from 10-12 June
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