Official Site

Gavin Friday will be talking to Barry Egan on Radio Nova 100FM’s ‘In Conversation’ this Sunday (September 12th) from 7pm to 8pm GMT.

Listen online on the Radio Nova website.

“How can your skin betray how you really feel about a song? Why is a minor chord sad? How is music linked with memory?” Gavin Friday, Kate Ellis – who is one of the lead instrumentalists on Gavin’s new album – and BP Fallon will appear at ‘Biorhythm Live’ on September 16th, as part of Dublin’s Science Gallery’s BIORHYTHM: Music and the Body festival to talk and improvise about the subject of music and emotion.

September 16, 2010
19:00 – 22:00
Science Gallery
Pearse Street, Dublin
Tickets €28. Book now

http://www.myspace.com/katecello
http://www.bpfallon.com/

Gavin Friday on Yeats
with Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill
Seen at the National Library, June 30, 2010

Demand for Gavin Friday, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill performing work by William Butler Yeats on June 30th was so great, the National Library decided to simulcast the event in the Library’s cafe. Gavin, approaching the material in his own inimitable way, read his personal selection of poems covering themes of romance, politics and celtic mysticism, using the full width of his voice to add light and shade to Yeats’ words, and body to punctuate his phrasing.

Hayes (fiddle) and Cahill (guitar) provided musical interludes and improvised on ‘The Stolen Child’, Yeats’ own tale of dazzle and delight. Although they had little rehearsal time and come from very different traditions, the artists managed to find common ground, and simply ‘clicked’. Hayes kept his eyes on Gavin throughout the performance following his lead while Cahill fixed on the fiddler. “I’m not from Sligo,” said Gavin, “I’m from Dublin,” and launched into a purposefully flat reading of ‘The Fiddler of Dooney’, accentuating his Northside Dublin inflection. It worked well with the ballad’s iambic trimeter: “I passed my brother and cousin / They read in their books of prayer / I read in my book of songs / I bought at the Sligo fair.” He ended with two encores picked on the spot and chose ‘Drinking Song’ because the title appealed to him and then closed with ‘Brown Penny’ (perhaps subconciously because it’s theme echoes his own classic ‘Tell Tale Heart’) the words of which sound particularly Fridayesque: “For he would be thinking of love / Till the stars had run away / And the shadows eaten the moon.”

The Library’s master of ceremonies, paraphrasing writer Colm Toibin in his closing words to the audience, said: “It wasn’t the guitar players and the fiddlers and the actors and the poets who bankrupted the country, who ran our country into the ground, but if we are to make it back, if we are to take it back… I don’t know about you, but my heart will be all that stronger, for tonight we’ve been in the presence of real art, real artists and it seems such a good thing that’s it’s in the heart of the National Library.” He then called for another round of applause. Later that evening, at the Merrion Hotel, the Library presented the musicians with 1st edition copies of Yeats’ books to thank them for their involvement in the Summer’s Wreath festival.

The poems

• September, 1913
• To a friend whose work has come to nothing
• To Ireland in the coming times
• He thinks of his past greatness when a part of the constellations of heaven
• He wishes for the cloths of heaven
• The stolen child
• The fiddler of Dooney

—

• A drinking song (video)
• Brown Penny (video)

Continued

Gavin Friday and Dave Ball’s cover of Suicide’s ‘Ghostrider’ is now available on vinyl and for download from Blast First Petite.

The single was recorded as part of a 70th Birthday Limited Edition EP tribute series to the Suicide vocalist Alan Vega. The download comes in two formats: mp3 and high quality lossless FLAC file. It includes the single’s artwork.

Buy the vinyl 10″ or Download ‘ Ghostrider’ . The limited edition vinyl 10″ of the song contans additional tracks by Thomas Brinkmann (‘Diamonds, Furcoats and Champagne’ ) and Alan Vega (‘Puss On Tha Time Warp’). It is also available as Limited Edition Radio CD.

Listen to the song on MySpace.

‘Summer’s Wreath’, a month long celebration of the works of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, will conclude on Wednesday, June 30th at 8pm with a performance by Gavin Friday. In this unique event, Gavin will present his selection of Yeats’s work and will be accompanied by the renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill.

Leading names from the world of music, stage, screen, visual arts, politics, literature and academia are coming together at the National Library of Ireland this June for its annual month-long celebration of the life and works of William Butler Yeats. With the programme now in it’s 4th year, ‘Summer’s Wreath 2010‘ offers free public readings, reflections, lectures and performances and will feature many prominent female contributors this year echoing the passionate and complex relationship which Yeats had with women throughout his life.

Gavin Friday on Yeats
National Library of Ireland
Wednesday 30 June at 8.00pm

Admission is free but booking is essential. To reserve up to two places, please call +353 1 6030277

Rubyworks are delighted to announce the signing of singer, composer and artiste Gavin Friday to the label.

Gavin has been working on songs for a new studio album since 2008; co-writing with Cork based keyboard player Herbie Macken. The pair first collaborated for the Patrick McCabe play ‘The Revenant’ for the Druid Theatre Company in 2007.

Recording for the new album started last summer in Dublin, with producer Ken Thomas (Sigur Ros, Moby, M83) at the controls. The record was mixed and completed in the UK in earlier this year; and is currently being scheduled for a late summer release. It will be Gavin’s first solo album since 1995’s ‘Shag Tobacco’.

His recent work includes film scores for ‘In America’ and ‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. ‘Nothing Like The Sun’ with Gavin Bryars for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and ‘Drifting And Tilting’ with Scott Walker at The Barbican. Plus ongoing live and studio collaborations with long time compadre Hal Willner; and the very special “An Evening With Gavin Friday & Friends”, a unique event with a stellar line up at Carnegie Hall in 2009.

Gavin is in the process of putting together a new live band with a view to returning to the concert stage later in 2010.

http://gavinfriday.com
http://rubyworks.com

http://twitter.com/gavinfriday
http://twitter.com/gavinfridaynews

In last Sunday’s Washington Post, Sinead O’Connor wrote an impassioned letter about sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland and The Vatican and Pope Benedict’s involvement in the Church’s cover up. She says:

“This month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology — of sorts — to Ireland to atone for decades of sexual abuse of minors by priests whom those children were supposed to trust. To many people in my homeland, the pope’s letter is an insult not only to our intelligence, but to our faith and to our country. To understand why, one must realize that we Irish endured a brutal brand of Catholicism that revolved around the humiliation of children. [...] Benedict’s apology gives the impression that he heard about abuse only recently, and it presents him as a fellow victim: “I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.” But Benedict’s infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication — updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims “observe the strictest secret” and be “restrained by a perpetual silence.” [...] Benedict’s apology states that his concern is “above all, to bring healing to the victims.” Yet he denies them the one thing that might bring them healing — a full confession from the Vatican that it has covered up abuse and is now trying to cover up the cover up.”

Gavin Friday supports these powerful words and respects Sinead’s courage to ‘kick against the pricks’.

Read Sinead O’Connor’s full letter on WashingtonPost.com.