It’s been a busy few weeks.  Last week I had the world premiere of Derek Ball’s new opera Sile an tSleibhe.  It was great to work with Eamonn Galldubh, Tristan Rosenstock and Naoise O’Briain on this, as well as Derek and Cathal O’Searcaigh of course.  David Bremner stepped in to conduct the performance (excerpts only) and the whole thing was in the BackLoft.  Now I’m getting ready for my concert performance of Britten’s Peter Grimes.  I’m playing Ellen Orford – quite a strange character! It’s hard to work out how much she does actually trust Peter – I’m not sure that she’s really the nice person she’s thought of as being.  It’ll be great to  be over in Cumbria for a few days before the show.  I’ll be staying with David’s Dad in the middle of nowhere, so will try to treat it as the summer holiday I never had.  After that, it’ll be straight into National Chamber Choir of Ireland rehearsals for the Autumn tour with David Hill – really looking forward to singing Bach: Jesu meine Freude!!! And the following week will see me and David performing in the Ranelagh Arts Festival.

Tonight, I’m off to see Floating World and Bluepatch Production of Oh Look, Hummingbirds in the Fringe Festival – think this may have to be my only Fringe show.  It’s all about memory and lifelogging, sounds fascinating and have been looking forward to this for forever. 

I saw a fascinating film last night – Five Obstructions – it’s a Lars van Trier film where he challenges an older Danish film maker, Jorgen Leth, to remake a 1967 film the Perfect Man five different times with various different “obstructions” imposed on the direction.  Think I’ll watch the Perfect Man tonight, looks like it’s there as an added feature on the dvd.