THIS summer’s music festival season got off to a cracking start in the salubrious surrounds of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham over the recent bank holiday weekend.
The likes of English rockers Kasabian, and veterans Primal Scream drew huge crowds to the city’s Forbidden Fruit which proved a massive success with enthusiastic punters over the two days.
The rain stayed away and the sun shone on what has become for many a must do to get themselves festival fit in time for the rest of the summer.
And it marked just the start of a particularly busy summer on the festival circuit in Dublin with two more huge gigs organised for the Kilmainham venue.
In July the legendary Italian composer, Ennio Morricone, takes to the stage at the Irish Museum Of Modern Art (IMMA) for a show that is set to thrill a very expectant audience.
Morricone, who has written music for more than 500 motion pictures and television series, rarely performs and tickets for his first show on July 28 were snapped up within hours of going on sale.
The writer of such classic film scores for director Sergio Leone’s
‘Spaghetti Westerns’ including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West was said to have been moved by the ecstatic response he received from Irish audiences snapping up his tickets.
His second show takes place the day before, on Saturday, July 27.
The sedate maestro of the classics will then make way for the more rumbustious sounds of Brit Band favourites Blur who are playing their only UK and Irish date at IMMA on August 1.
The Brit Award winners have been in fine form since reuniting in 2008 with a series of amazing concerts and the release of several retrospective singles.
However, this will be the only chance to catch them on these shores this year as they head off to headline Belgium’s Rock Werchter as well as perform at the Spanish and Portuguese dates of the Primavera Sound Festival, and America’s Coachella.
Also on the Southside this summer is the Longitude Music Festival in Marley Park which is a new gathering featuring a host of top names.
From Friday, July 19 to Sunday 21, we have the Foals, the Villagers and Kraftwerk as headliners.
At the end of the summer the old crooner Leonard Cohan takes his eclectic art to the stage of the O2 on September 11 and 12 following previous outings at Kilmianham.
Having not been to see him myself yet, I can’t vouch for the man but going by what almost every single other person who has and raved on about him, then this is one not to be missed.