Liverpool Irish Festival hits full swing

DIRECTOR Lenny Abrahamson, The Irish Sea Sessions and Irish comic legend Pat Shortt are three good reasons not to stop in this week as The Liverpool Irish Festival gets into its stride. 

Billed as the U.K’s most successful Irish cultural festival and now in its 11th year, expect a rich mix of music, drama, comedy, film, talks, literature, lectures and walks. 

Highlights this week include a rare showing in the UK of director Lenny Abramson’s  first feature length film, Adam and Paul (2004), taking place this Thursday (Oct 17) at FACT. 

Adam And PaulAbrahamson, who will be around for an after show discussion, is taking a break from finishing off his fourth feature, Frank, inspired by musician Chris Sievey’s Frank Sidebottom persona, starring Michael Fassbender and Domhnall Gleeson. 

Pat Shortt’s new one man show, I am The Band, comes to the Unity Theatre on Tuesday (Oct 15). It charts the life of Dixie Walsh, a solo lounge musician. During the night Dixie reminisces about the path his career has taken and the struggles he has had to get to the top. This is not Pat Shortt’s first appearance at Liverpool Irish Festival, last year he starred as Josie in Garage which was shown in the Irish Film Season at FACT.

As always, it is music that takes centre stage and ground-breaking, part super-group, part sessions project The Irish Sea Sessions returns on Friday (Oct 18).

Liverpool Philharmonic Hall is once again the venue for a show that promises “a radically new and exciting line up of the most talented musicians in their field”. Now in its fourth year, 13 hand-picked multi-instrumentalists and singers from traditional and contemporary music backgrounds, and from both sides of the Irish Sea, come together with the audience for another night of impassioned exposition of the shared music and the special bond between Liverpool and Ireland.

This year’s new-look new line-up includes: Declan O'Rourke, Robert Vincent, Pauline Scanlon, Alan Burke, Bernard O'Neill, Gino Lupari, Dave Munnelly, Neil Campbell, Terry Clarke-Coyne, Eamon Coyne, Mick Coyne, Sean Regan and Emily Portman.

Pat Shortt As Dixie WalshPerformances by Damien Dempsey have become one of the cornerstones of Liverpool Irish Festival, he plays The Kazimier on 16 October. 

This year will also see the launch of The Festival Club which will run on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights during the festival at The Zanzibar Club on Seel Street. It will be hosted by local musicians Alan O’Hare and Ian Prowse and will feature performances from popular local musicians and those performing at the festival.

The full line up for this week can be viewed here