Paxos Festival 2022
Concert
Muldoon’s Picnic on Paxos
8 July 2022
Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh. He now lives in New York and has taught at Princeton University for thirty-five years. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry including Howdie-Skelp, published by FSG and Faber and Faber in 2021. Among his awards are the 1972 Eric Gregory Award, the 1980 Sir Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the 1994 T.S. Eliot Prize, the 1997 Irish Times Poetry Prize, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Griffin International Prize for Poetry, the 2004 American Ireland Fund Literary Award, the 2004 Shakespeare Prize, the 2006 European Prize for Poetry, the 2015 Pigott Poetry Prize, the 2017 Queens Gold Medal for Poetry, and the 2020 Michael Marks Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Not many bands can lay claim to originating an entire genre of music, but Horslips were forging their unique and innovative Celtic Rock before it had a name. From their beginnings in 1972 they blended centuries-old traditional tunes with rock rhythms, borrowed themes from ancient Irish mythology, and added in well-crafted song-writing and accomplished musicianship. Not to mention the platforms and the glitter! In doing so they paved the way for Dexy's Midnight Runners, The Pogues and a host of others, and developed a business model that became a template for U2.
Horslips toured Ireland, the UK, Europe and North America incessantly, and made 12 albums before breaking up in 1980. After "the longest tea break in music history" they reunited in 2009 for another decade of exciting live shows and adventurous collaborations. 50 years on from their first single, 2022 sees the release of a 34-disc retrospective box set, "More Than You Can Chew".
Their new line-up, appearing together publicly for the first time on Paxos, is Jim Lockhart (flute, keyboards) Fiach Moriarty (guitar, vocals) Ray Fean (drums, bodhran) Barry Devlin (bass, vocals).
Iernis was formed nearly 25 years ago with the aim of playing Celtic music, and in particular that of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and Galicia. The band filled a gap as the first band to perform this music in the Athens, and Greek music scene of that time. Their name, Iernis, was given to Ireland by the Greek seafarer Pytheas in 330 B.C.
Iernis perform this music mainly in music venues and festivals in Athens and other Greek cities. Between them they have collaborated with a range of musicians worldwide and from Ireland, including Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh.
Their line-up for Paxos 2022 is Manolis Galiatsos (Bouzouki, Mandolin and Banjo), Regina Sofou (Fiddle), Chrysoula Kechagioglou (Vocals, Percussion) and George Galiatsos (Guitar, Bouzouki, Vocals).