Spring Clean your Brain with Professor Ian Robertson

THURSDAY, 18TH MARCH 7.30PM-MAIN AUDITORIUM

Spend an evening with one of the world's leading researchers in brain rehabilitation and pick up invaluable techniques on how to keep your brain in tip top condition! Here at The National Concert Hall  we are welcoming in the new season with a stimulating and interactive seminar led by Professor Ian Roberson, Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin.

You can learn how to re-train and sharpen your brain to maximise output - 'work smarter not harder' applies to our brains as well as ourselves.
This stimulating and lively interactive seminar will demonstrate how:

■Exercise actually grows your brain and improves your memory

■Foods and vitamins make you sharper

■To Use your brain or lose it

■To Unstress your brain – it doesn’t like it

■Exercises to keep your brain fit

Handouts available as part of seminar price

Professor Robertson will be kindly donating his proceeds from this workshop to Headway

Tickets: €40.For booking details click HERE

La Dolce Vita: Celebrating the Film Music of Nino Rota

Here on The National Concert Hall blog, we are delighed to announce our involvement with The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
As a celebration of the 50th anniversary of La Dolce Vita, JDIFF will present an evening of music from world-renowned Italian composer, Nino Rota.The programme focuses on Rota's celebrated collaboration with Federico Fellini, with whom he had a rich collaborative partnership for over 25 Years. This programme will feature his iconic score for Fellini's La Dolce Vita and selections from Rota's scores for 8½, Visconti's The Leopard and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, which won him an Oscar.  Dont miss this opportunity to experience the music of an astonishingly gifted and prolific composer.

La Dolce Vita-Nino Rota Film Music
Monday 22 Feb/Main Auditorium-8pm
Tickets: €18, €20 (Concessions: €15)
Click HERE to book now!

This event is presented to you as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which takes place in Dublin city centre venues from Feb 18-28. See http://www.jdiff.com/  for further details on this years programme.

Voilà La Charlatanne

Karen Egan with The Cian Boylan Quintet. Wednesday January 20th @ 8pm. John Field Room. Tickets: €22.

“The real thing.” THE IRISH TIMES

The chic diva and former ‘Nuala’ presents a show filled with bold, brassy rhythm and attitude and plenty of comic timing. Mixing a cocktail of Cohen, Brel, Waits and Piaf and Egan’s trademark originals songs, there will be something for everyone!  Karen sings in English with a dash of French and maybe a smidgen of Russian to boot! Karen loves performing music with a theatrical style. Known for her dry wit, she manages to juxtapose the funny with the serious, the bizarre with the macabre.

Karen Egan has a background in theatre and has acted in many groundbreaking productions including the award-winning ‘Dublin By Lamplight’ (Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2005 & UK tour 2006). Karen was also a member of the comedy singing trio, The Nualas and has just finished shooting a new RTE television comedy series entitled ‘Your Bad Self’ . La Charlatanne is a perfect blend of Karen’s talents: comedy, music and drama.

Supported by a six-piece band, this is a show that will delight in its contradictions. Sexy burlesque, wonderful music and unmissable magic!!
For booking details CLICK HERE

WIN!! Jill Crossland Recital Competition!!!

well deserves her enviable reputation as a Bach pianist" - BBC Music Magazine

"performance full of intensity and real pathos" -International Record Review

See for yourself why this acclaimed Pianist is renowned for her original and impassioned interpretations, especially of Bach.

We have ten pairs of tickets to give away for her debut National Concert Hall recital, tonight in the intimate setting of the John Field Room. Details here: http://bit.ly/92B70I

HOW TO ENTER: Simply answer the following question:

Which composers whose anniversaries are celebrated this year appear in tonights’ programme?

Reply with your NAME and CONTACT TELEPHONE NUMBER to info@nch.ie  making sure to use JILL CROSSLAND OFFER in the subject line! Good Luck!

WIN!! Christmas Crackers Giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who entered our Christmas Crackers Twitter Giveaway. All winner have now been contacted! More special offers coming soon!

As the season of giving is almost upon us, we are getting into the spirit of things a little early with thanks to Kevin Hough Productions! The first 20 people to email us HERE will win a free pair of tickets to Christmas Crackers on Wednesday 2 December at 8pm. Join Ellen McElroy, Damian Smith, Special Guests Arklow Shipping Silver Band, and presenter Kevin Hough for an evening of Christmas popular Songs, Carols and Poetry, Featuring all your Seasonal Favourites,
HOW TO ENTER: Simply reply with your NAME and contact telephone number to info@nch.ie making sure to use TWITTER OFFER in the subject line. The first three received will also win a limited edition National Concert Hall Mouse! Good Luck!

Come to The Cabaret! Artist Profile: Ute Lemper

Few artists can enthral an audience like the renowned vocalist and actress Ute Lemper. Her career is vast and varied. She has made her mark on the stage, in films, in concert and as a unique recording artist and interpreter of sultry Berlin cabaret, French Chanson and the works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.


Ute was born in Münster, Germany in 1963. After graduation from the Dance Academy in Cologne and the Max Reinhardt Seminary Drama School in Vienna, she started performing in Stuttgart with roles in plays by Fassbinder and others. She went on to dazzle audiences in Europe and worldwide in musical theatre roles - Velma Kelly in Chicago (London, New York, Las Vegas), Lola in The Blue Angel, Peter in Peter Pan (both in Berlin), Cats in Vienna and Sally Bowles in Jérôme Savary's Paris production of Cabaret. Yet she returned again and again to the dark, complex and powerfully creative German past, in solo concerts like Kurt Weill Recital and Berlin Cabaret Evening; in symphony concerts, including The Seven Deadly Sins and Songs from Kurt Weill; in Pina Bausch's Kurt Weill Revue; and on the discs Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill (Vols. I & II), The Threepenny Opera, The Seven Deadly Sins, Mahagonny Songspiel, and Berlin Cabaret Songs (comprising works of songwriters censored or persecuted by the National Socialists).

Ute's edgy aesthetic and repertoire also reach far beyond Germany. Though she says, "I cannot stress enough my life's journey exploring repertoire inspired by art of the Weimar Republic," she points out that this art also "reflects other philosophical and cultural horizons, other political matters, and other times." In order fully to explore and comprehend the history she inherited, Ute has naturally and with brilliant success taken up material from other European traditions and from the United States. Ute has explored the French chanson from Edith Piaf, Jacques Prévert, Joseph Kosma and Serge Gainsbourg to the Belgian poet Jacques Brel. She also explored the contemporary alternative rock repertoire – from Tom Waits, Elvis Costello to Nick Cave on her Punishing Kiss album – and finally created her own original material which can be heard on the latest album But One Day...

Ute has just recorded and co produced, with Todd Turkisher, a complete album with her own original songs. She wrote music and lyrics and together with her band, arranged a unique song cycle of unusual stories about places, cities, lives and love.

Following a remarkable début with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in 2007, hailed by the Irish Independent as 'brilliant, stunning and totally captivating', she returns on Tuesday, December 1 to command and mesmerise with her elegant, eloquent, inimitable style.

Signature Series: Ute Lemper with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Tuesday, December 1. Show 8pm. Tickets from €25.
Click HERE for booking info.

Quick Guide to Composers: George Enescu (1881-1955)

A Life Less Ordinary

• George Enescu - a prodigious musician since his early childhood is renowned for his violin virtuoso performances as well as his well-known Romanian Rhapsodies.
• Enescu was born in Liveni, northern Romania. He entered the Vienna Conservatoire at seven, to study the violin, graduated when he was 13. It is there where he first met Brahms, whose influence is evident in Enescu's early works.
• In 1923 he made his debut as conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York. He appeared as a conductor with many American orchestras, and in 1936 it is believed that he was one of the candidates considered to replace Toscanini as permanent conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
• In 1935, he conducted the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris and Yehudi Menuhin (who had been his pupil for several years starting in 1927) in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major. He also conducted the New York Philharmonic between 1937 and 1938.
• He lived in Paris and in Romania, but after World War II and the Soviet occupation of Romania, he remained in Paris.
• His generosity and conviviality were legendary. Between the two World Wars, George Enescu seemed to be at the height of his powers, conducting the New York Philharmonic and numbering among his pupils Yehudi Menuhin. But his long exile from Romania following the communist take-over took its toll on him, practically and psychologically, and he died in poverty in Paris in May 1955.

Remus Azoitei and Eduard Stan’s Internationally acclaimed recordings of George Enescu's complete works for violin/piano on 2CDs (2007/8) have inspired an international tour of cultural capitals, bringing the work of this brilliant Romanian composer and musician to a live, world-wide audience.



Catch them on their only Dublin show tonight in the intimate setting of The John Field Room for what promises to be a very special concert. Show 8pm. Tickets: €18. Click HERE for more information.

(Sources: www.enescusociety.org  www.festivalenescu.ro  )