Camarata at Carnegie: Barry Douglas brings his Orchestra to NYC

World-renowned pianist Barry Douglas speaks to Vincent Murphy, ahead of his orchestra Camerata Ireland’s performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall next weekend.

Not every group can boast having the Queen of England and the President of Ireland as its joint patrons.

But Elizabeth II and Mary McAleese have both lent their seal of approval to Barry Douglas and his collection of fine Irish musicians. Camarata Ireland has been touring the globe since it was established in 1999, showcasing talent that is something of a hidden secret in its home country.

“While it’s rightly known for things like U2, the Chieftains, theater and poetry and so on, Ireland is not that well known for classical music,” says Douglas. “I thought the standard of musicianship was so fantastic, that surely if we put a few of our Irish musicians together they could form something really fantastic.”

And that’s just what Douglas did.

Camarata Ireland is an orchestra bringing together talented musicians from the whole island of Ireland. Most of them are young, in their 20s and 30s, but it’s not a youth orchestra, and there are also several established and accomplished members. But Camarata is also about more than music. It brings together musicians from across the political divide in Northern Ireland, and from North and South of the border.

“I think that musicians and artists in general can play a very important part in building bridges between communities,” says Douglas, who was born in Belfast. “I think it’s really important that artists speak up and say all the positive things that are already there. It’s not even creating anything new, there are so many positive things that have happened, and I think we as musicians can play a small part in that as well.”

It was this ambition that caught the eye of the two heads of State, Queen Elizabeth and President McAleese. “That was an acknowledgement and an approval in a sense. They saw that we are trying to understand, trying to create a bit of harmony in a musical sense and a social sense that they approved of it. It was and still is an amazing privilege to have both of them on board.”

The orchestra enjoys a busy touring schedule and has played China, Poland, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany. It was the first Irish classical music ensemble to play Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. They will appear at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall on March 5^th, on the first stop of its fourth US tour. They will also visit Nashville, Tennessee; Carbondale and River Forest, Illinois; Carmel, Indiana and Winter Park and Sarasota, Florida during this visit to the United States.

And Barry Douglas is planning to treat audiences to “a nice mix”.  “We didn’t go for just a solid classical program. I wanted to highlight the Irish nature of the orchestra,” he said. “We are not pretending to be the Chieftains or anything, but I think there is something we can do to express our culture in our particular kind of style.”

The program includes two John Field’s Nocturnes (#1 and #5), which were written for piano, but which Douglas has arranged for piano and orchestra. There will also two Mozart pieces – Porgi Amor from the Marriage of Figaro, and Piano Concerto No 23 in A Major. And there will also be a unique opportunity to hear Bunting’s Druid Dances. “In 1792 there was a huge harp festival in Belfast, organized by a guy called Bunting,” explains Douglas, “and he wrote down all the old Irish melodies. The harpists came from all over Ireland. I’ve incorporated five of those into a set of a suite of dances, from a lamentation to a planxty to a lullaby. I’ve orchestrated that for the orchestra as well.”

The tour also features Ireland’s internationally acclaimed soprano Celine Byrne as a guest artist, and audiences can look forward to renditions of My Lagan Love, Carrickfergus and Last Rose of Summer. Byrne has collaborated with all the modern greats like Jose Carrerras, Roberto Alagna and Andrea Bocelli. “She is fabulous. We worked together a couple of years ago with the National Symphony of Ireland for RTE Television and I was so impressed with her poise and her ability to transcend all sorts of styles,” says Douglas.

Byrne and Douglas both represent the cream of Ireland’s classical music talent. Douglas has enjoyed a major career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. He is in demand across the world and has performed with such leading orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and all the major London orchestras. The 2010-11 season includes his return to the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra, and solo performances in Germany, Ireland, Britain, France, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Italy, Singapore, China, Thailand, Holland, Spain and the US. He will return to the Proms in London with the BBC Symphony Orchestra to perform the premiere of a new concerto written for him by Kevin Volans in celebration of his 50th birthday. 

Despite the hectic schedule, he remains passionately committed to Camarata Ireland, and showcasing the phenomenal talent of Ireland’s classical musicians. “The following for Irish traditional culture is very strong, and rightly so,” he says. “But I think some of these musicians deserve to be recognized by a broader public – be that an international public, Irish-American public or Irish public at home. We need to treasure our own musicians, and our own people that achieve something, and make sure they have a name abroad as well.”

Gayle Dunne's 11th hour bid for deal with US neighbours over $2m property

GAYLE Dunne, wife of heavily indebted builder Sean Dunne, has made a last-ditch bid to save her controversial plan to redevelop a €1.5m home in the US.

A lawyer representing Mrs Dunne, a former gossip columnist, has extended an olive branch to residents opposed to the redevelopment of the property in the exclusive Belle Haven enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut.

The residents, whose objections led to work being halted last October, were invited to enter negotiations just hours before the project was due to be discussed at a public planning hearing on Wednesday night.

Mrs Dunne's lawyer Thomas Heagney, who acts as a trustee for the property, 38 Bush Avenue, succeeded in an application to have the hearing postponed.

He told the Greenwich planning and zoning appeals board he had discussed the matter with the neighbours' attorney.

The Dunnes moved to the upmarket area last year and have been renting a mansion while the Bush Avenue property is being redeveloped.

Mr Dunne had been regularly commuting between the US and Ireland, where he retains substantial business interests.

The developer, who is dealing with NAMA and also has large debts with non-NAMA banks, has denied being the owner of the Bush Avenue property.

However, his wife, who has refused to comment on her links to the property, has listed it as her home address in filings for two real-estate companies that she now runs.

Neither Gayle (36) nor Sean Dunne (56) were present at the brief hearing.

Plans to remodel the Victorian-era property have been in limbo for the past four months after local planning inspectors ordered work to stop.

They intervened after locals complained that demolition exceeded what had been permitted.

Objections

A number of residents who turned up for the hearing had also intended to voice their objections that the house being planned was too big for the site.

Speaking after he left the meeting, Mr Heagney said it was "premature" to talk about what kind of deal he was seeking to reach with the residents.

"We encourage the discussions and we'll be talking to their representatives," he said.

Richard Case, a retired IBM executive who lives next door to 38 Bush Avenue, said negotiations between the two sides had not yet begun.

"What I understand is that there was a phone call to start that process this afternoon," he told the Irish Independent.

He said his basic objection was that the planned house was far too big for the site.

Another resident, Bonnie Copp, said the property should adhere to the same building restrictions as others in the area and that if construction was limited to certain hours of the day and the size was more appropriate, then people would not object.

- Vincent Murphy in Greenwich, Connecticut

This article appears in today's issue of the Irish Independent

Tweaking the Marketing World

Jerry Kennelly’s first business sold for $135m. Now one of Ireland’s most successful entrepreneurs is back with a new venture which aims to give small business owners the marketing materials they need to compete with the big boys.

You’ve probably seen some of Jerry Kennelly’s work, but you just don’t realize it.

For years, publications, companies and websites have been using his collection of stock photos to illustrate articles. For example, have you ever read an article about farming, which was accompanied by a random photograph of a tractor or a smiling woman tending to her vegetables? When people needed a generic royalty-free photograph, they often turned to Stockbyte, the company he founded in 1996.

“We actually helped create that market,” he says, “We were one of the first three companies in the world to actually invent that market, where images are sold on a software-like basis. By the end of it, we had 85,000 images. We were the largest supplier to Getty Images and had a 10% share in the global royalty-free stock photo market.”

Getty, the world leaders in stock photography, bought out Stockbyte in 1996 for a whopping $135m, but not until after a bidding war with Bill Gates and others. Not bad for a company based in Tralee, Co Kerry, and founded by a man who previously worked as a freelance photojournalist.

Now, Jerry Kennelly is back with a new project - a website that aims to revolutionize the way small and medium businesses market themselves.

 “I found it frustrating that small and medium enterprises couldn’t get access to design. The process doesn’t particularly suit them,” he said. “You go to an agency, brief them on what you want and they come back a couple of weeks later with some ideas.  There’s lot of tic-tacking back and forward, with copy and pictures and corrections and so on. It’s a really expensive process and time-wise it’s also expensive for the entrepreneur. It excludes a lot of people from accessing really quality design. That’s the problem we set out to address when we sat down three years ago to set this up.”

The result is Tweak.com – a website where business owners can access hundreds of thousands of design options themselves, and tailor them to their own needs. Importantly, they can do so at a fraction of the cost – Kennelly says savings are in the order of 80%. Whether it’s a flyer, a brochure or a newspaper ad, the website offers branding of a standard comparable to larger companies with huge budgets.

“Print is a very powerful medium still, but it’s been difficult to access. This way, small businesses can do it at home in the evenings, when they are doing their taxes or whatever else. They can do things for months ahead, without paying anything upfront.” Kennelly believes his new website can help small and medium businesses compete in today’s world.

“The small and medium business owners are having a tough time right now,” he says, “One of the problems they have, because of the globalized world, the small coffee shop is competing against Starbucks. And Starbucks obviously has huge economies of scale. They do their branding and design once, and it’s applied across thousands of stores. The small business owner doesn’t have that opportunity. And this levels the playing field for them to a great extent. It gives them a chance to look their best. That first impression is so important for people. We all make instant decisions about, is this something that’s worthwhile or not? And is it something that is professional, is it something I trust, is it a brand I want to engage with?"

"No matter how big or small it is. We are being bombarded with a lot of information, a lot of marketing every day. And in a millisecond we make that decision. And what often defines whether we say yes or no, in our own mind, is the quality of the design and the image.  And tweak.com can level the playing field and empower small businesses in a way that they have never been empowered before.”

This is no small project. Tweak is one of the most significant new web-based companies to launch out of Europe this year. Well over $10m has been invested in the company to date, and Kennelly believes he can be number one in this new market. A team of about 50 people in Ireland, a dozen or so in New York and others in San Francisco, London and elsewhere have been working on it for three years. They have over 400,000 individual pieces of design as they launch, and promise to have one million by the end of their first year. It means business owners sitting at their computers can design marketing material in a matter of minutes, that look like something designed by an agency.

A lot of thought has been put into the pictures, design and copy offered and rival companies are unlikely to end up with similar designs. “Right now we are the largest collection of customizable design on the planet, at launch. So the scale at which this business is going to create content is huge. We address 300 different business types. We’ve done the research in advance. This is a large scale global platform, not unlike the software business, which allows the cost to be shared among millions of transactions. We’re looking to serve millions of customers. We are wrapping up all that intellectual property and putting into a really simple interface and allowing people to get access to it.”

Of course, there will still be companies who will want completely original material designed specifically to their needs. Thousands of young freelance designers, with degrees from design courses, can offer competitive rates and will be competing with Tweak. But Kennelly is not worried.

“I think there is room for everyone in the marketplace, really,” he says, “We are not trying to do people out of business or anything. At the end of the day, if you can afford it and you’ve got the time, custom design is a very good solution for a lot of people. It’s a bit like the clothing business. I generally buy ready-to-wear suits. I don’t always get a custom suit. Up to now in the design business, you’ve only had the option of the custom suit.  And this is a hybrid between the custom and ready-to-wear. All the research has been done. We understand the business types. We have had a huge research exercise and we have got inside the heads of small business owners and we’ve produced something we think is very relevant.”

Julie Feeney’s Impossibly Beautiful US Dream

Quirky and original, the award-winning  Julie Feeney is about to bring her musical styling to America for the first time, writes Vincent Murphy.

AS anyone who watched last week’s Grammys knows, the crazier the better when it comes to fashion if you’re a pop star. From Lady Gaga’s arrival inside an egg, to Ceelo Green’s feathered peacock outfit, you’ve got to have something to make yourself stand out in today’s music world.

In the case of Ireland’s Julie Feeney, who is about to embark on her debut US tour, it’s hard not to notice that she’s wearing a house on her head. A tiny multi-colored house.

“I had a tree house painted in specific colors in a garden in Galway for the photo work on my album (Pages)” explains Feeney, who hails from Athenry. “Sharon Costello Desmond painted it for me. Then when I progressed to doing live shows, I wanted that magical fairytale world brought into my live performances. So I had a replica of the house made into a hat (by Kim Gilbert, of Irish designers Attack on Humans).”

She now wears the headpiece at all her live performances. Photographers couldn’t get enough of the hat at the launch last month of Imagine Ireland in New York, and several other journalists asked me “Who’s the woman with the house on her head?” The hat was in evidence again, the following week when Julie performed a short set at Joe’s Pub at Astor Place as part of the annual performing arts showcase APAP/NYC. But the audience was taking notice of more than her choice of milliner.

Feeney, and her surprisingly large cast of supporting musicians and singers, are a fascinating live act. Her beautiful singing is combined with a captivating, sometimes manic stage presence. She’s not afraid to get out into the audience and bring the performance right to their tables. Some were bewildered, others captivated. No-one was bored.

Feeney returns to the East Village venue on March 9^th, as part of her first ever nationwide tour of the United States. “It’s fantastic,” she says, “I just feel this is going to be a great year.” Feeney will play 19 venues across the States over the next few months. 

She’s already a critical darling in her home country. Her first album 13 Songs won the Choice Music Prize in 2006, and her second Pages was also nominated in 2009. She writes, composes and produces all of her own work – releasing her last album on her own record label Mittens. She’s been invited to orchestrate and perform her own music for many orchestras, and her song “Impossibly Beautiful” was used for a high profile TV advertisement (VHI) in Ireland.

“It’s nice to be coming here a little more established, rather than a complete unknown.” she says, acknowledging that it would have been very difficult to make a mark in the US if she had tried it any sooner. “It’s nice having two albums, and to be performing a variety of different types of set-ups. Because I’ve tried all of this out before. It’s not that Ireland is practice in any way, of course, but it’s interesting now that I feel that, I’ve room to play with much more. I can pick any number of pieces to do now, whereas I wouldn’t have had that freedom if I had decided to come to America earlier.”

She thoroughly enjoyed her set at Joe’s Pub, remarking that the audience seemed to be really into what she was doing. “I’m not a typical pop artist. Because I compose for orchestras, I’m not ‘indie’ really, not a regular singer-songwriter. My audience is a bit different to that.” She’s been the South-x-Southwest rock showcase (“wonderful and amazing but a very different kind of world to mine”) before, and thinks Imagine Ireland is a better fit as a showcase for her talents. “My audience crosses into theater-goers as well as music lovers, classical as well as tradition. So this is exactly the right kind of pitching for who I am as an artist.” 

The highlight of her career so far was a 10-minute standing ovation she received at the end of a recent performance at the National Concert Hall in Dublin in front of a sell-out 1,200-strong crowd. “To fill the National Concert Hall was amazing,” she said. She’s now hoping to carry some of that enthusiasm with her across the Atlantic as he makes “a crucial step” in her career.

Julie was a professional choral singer for five years, and toured all over the world with various ensembles. But this is her first time in America with her own show. She has not released any of her music in the United States to date and is going to use her tour as a springboard. “The whole notion of releasing albums has changed so much now,” she says, “A release before meant one thing, but now it’s very different. I think the whole idea of presenting something with punch is only possible with a huge amount of money. When that isn’t there I think momentum is the most valuable thing you can have,” she says. 

Touring too is expensive, she explains, especially if you want to present your work in the way it should be. “You don’t need any luxury. You just need to be able to get there, particularly with flights and travel because America is so big.” She’s grateful to be getting support from Imagine Ireland – but is under no illusion that she herself needs to make the most of it by launching her album alongside the tour. “My launch is about leading with the ‘live’ – as opposed to the traditional model before, where an album is out on the seventh of March and there is a whole load of promotion around it. “I think it’s a great time now to be able to lead your launch with natural momentum.”

She plays FathomCreative in Washington DC on February 28^th, Club Passim in Cambridge, Mass. on March 07^th and Joe’s Pub, New York on March 9^th. After that, there are 16 more dates around the US. She’ll be releasing both “13 Songs” and “Pages”, digitally at least, in the US in the coming weeks.

The Truth about Bloomberg’s ‘Drunken Irish’ joke

If anybody had a problem with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech to the American Irish Historical Society last Wednesday, they certainly didn’t make it clear on the night.

Board members of the American Irish Historical Society and St Patrick’s Day Parade organizers happily posed for photographs with Mayor Bloomberg in the minutes after his speech, according to a number of people who attended the event.

“If some-one was ticked off with the joke, they didn’t show it and there are photographs to prove it,” said radio host Adrian Flannelly who was master of ceremonies at the event. He says once Mr Bloomberg had concluded his comments, he was surrounded by people wishing to have their photographs taken with him, or have their books signed for about thirty minutes.

“There was no reference whatsoever by anybody to the joke,” said Flanelly, “I can tell you first hand: nobody said it. Not a single person. There couldn’t have been anyone who took offence because if they did, they would have said something, instead of pushing each other out of the way to get photos taken with the mayor.”

Yet, the mayor’s ill-judged joke sparked a major controversy, covered by all the main news media here in the US, and in Ireland and the UK. Mr Bloomberg was attending the launch of a book celebrating the 250^th anniversary of the St Patrick’s Day Parade, written by historian John Ridge and Lynn Bushnell.  Adrian Flannelly, as MC, had been exchanging jokes with each of the speakers and when Mr Bloomberg was about to be introduced, he was informed that the Mayor had just bought a book with cash from his own pocket downstairs.

Adrian Flannelly

Flannelly joked that it was unusual to see “people in this neighbourhood putting their hands in their pockets” and asked if the Mayor had paid his sales tax. It was in the context of this back-and-forth joking that the Mayor made his ill-judged remarks. “I live in the neighborhood here, right around the corner,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “Normally when I walk by this building there are a bunch of people that are totally inebriated hanging out the window.”

The remarks drew mixture of laughs and groans from the crowd of around 100. “I know that’s a stereotype of the Irish,” he continued, “but nevertheless, we Jews from around the corner, think this.”

“It has been taken totally out of context,” says Adrian Flannelly, “It was a crappy joke, but no worse than others the politicians usually make in these type of situations when they are trying to be one of the lads, one of us. He was spurred on by the slagging and joviality that was going on at the time.”

Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg’s speech continued with his attempts at humor, saying that he was glad St Patrick’s Day was on a fixed date, not like Columbus Day, and a joke about the Metropolitan Museum of Art – something like “I don’t know who lives in the house across the street. They have a lot of art but not a lot of furniture”

The remarks went largely un-noticed at first, because the event was not widely covered by the media. But an opinion piece by Irish Voice publisher Niall O’Dowd on his Irish Central website described the remarks as bizarre, and said they had outraged some of those he spoke to at the event. New York news media began to take notice.

“We don’t get offended that easily, believe me,” Niall O’Dowd told Fox 5 television news, “But last night was particularly exceptional, I thought. It was way too far over the top.” Mayor Bloomberg apologized for any offence his remarks had caused. “I apologize,” he said, “I certainly did not mean to offend anybody.” But that did not stop the story from going global.

It was the lead story on the front page of both of New York City’s tabloid newspapers on Friday morning.

“Irish Stew” was the headline on the New York Post, “Bloomy’s Blarney” read the New York Daily News.

Chairman of the St Patrick’s Day parade John Dunleavy weighed into the controversy. “In this day and age for the mayor of the city of New York to make comments like that is outrageous and totally uncalled for,” he told the newspapers.

The story was covered by among others the BBC, and Daily Telegraph in London, CNN, the New York Times and others. Some who had attended the launch on Wednesday night told me Friday they were shocked that the remarks had ballooned into such a controversy.

Michael Bloomberg has been a strong ally of Irish Americans. He has travelled to Ireland on several occasions, and has been a strong advocate for immigrants’ rights, Northern Irish investment and other issues.

For Adrian Flannelly, who may have inadvertently sparked it all with his jokey introduction of Mr Bloomberg on the night, the reaction has been “unfortunate and way over-the-top”. “There is a good news story here that’s being lost in this,” he said, “The St Patrick’s Day parade is the longest running parade in the world bar none. In 1762, 14 years before the Declaration of Independence, someone thought this would be a good idea. And we are still doing it 250 years later. That’s what we should be talking about and instead we have this unnecessary controversy.”

US CRITICS BRAND U2'S SPIDERMAN MUSICAL 'A STINKER' AND 'ONE OF THE WORST EVER'

The major US theater critics have finally had their say on U2’s Spiderman musical on Broadway – and they’ve branded it an absolute stinker.

Several leading publications including the New York Times, Variety, and the LA Times have broken with Broadway convention by publishing reviews while the show is still in previews. The official opening of Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark does not take place until March 15^th. But on the basis that the $65m production has been in previews since November, and has been taking more than $1m in box office receipts every week, the critics said they believed they were entitled to have their say. Monday was the opening night scheduled before the musical’s latest postponement, and critics from several outfits timed their reviews to coincide with that date.

“Spiderman is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway, it may also rank among the worst,” writes Ben Brantley in the New York Times. “I’m not kidding. The sheer ineptitude of this show, inspired by the Spiderman comic books, loses its shock value early. After 15 or 20 minutes, the central question you keep asking yourself is likely to change from “How can $65 million look so cheap?” to “How long before I’m out of here?” 

The paper even criticizes the much-vaunted flying aerial stunts, and calls the show beyond repair. The music, written by Bono and the Edge, does not escape the drubbing either, and is compared to “a persistent headache”. “(The songs) are rarely allowed to take full, attention-capturing form. Mostly they blur into a sustained electronic twang of varying volume, increasing and decreasing in intensity, like a persistent headache,” writes Brantley.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “incoherent and no fun”.  Critic Charles McNulty said the battle over healthcare reform in the US had a better chance of being resolved than the problems in the show.

Peter Marks in the Washington Post said the musical belonged in “the dankest sub-basement of the American Musical Theater”. He says that it’s apparent after “170 spirit-snuffing minutes”, that director Julie Taymor had forgotten about three things: “1 A Coherent plot, 2 Tolerable music 3. Workable sets”.

Steve Suskin in Variety said “weaknesses lie with the book, music and lyrics, a kiss of death for most musicals; Taymor and her team seem to think this is a minor flaw, and initial box office returns suggest they might be right.”

The show has been a runaway success since previews began in November. Thousands of theatre-goers have packed the Foxwoods Theater off Times Square every night, some paying up to $275 for an orchestra seat. It’s twice overtaken Wicked as the number one box office draw on Broadway. The show has become the hottest ticket in town, thanks to the hype surrounding its regular postponements, major technical issues and serious injuries to the actors concerned.

It remains to be seen if the overwhelmingly negative critical mauling which the musical has received this week will influence ticket sales. Investors need the musical to be a sell-out for five full years if they are to recoup the money that it cost to stage. Producers are still making changes to the show, and they are furious that critics have reviewed Spider-man before it is “frozen”, saying it is not in the spirit of Broadway and all it represents. Critics say they will return to review the show when the changes are finalized – but that the theatergoing public is entitled to an independent of review of a show that is raking in millions of dollars each week.

Gabriel Byrne on the Irish elections and the power of art

The Irish are justifiably angry, Hollywood star Gabriel Byrne tells Vincent Murphy, but they’ll still probably elect the Usual Suspects.

“I’m not an economist but I think it’s pretty clear what happened,” Gabriel Byrne says, “The country was Madoff-ed.”

“And I think we have a natural desire for retribution.”

The Irish actor plays television’s most famous psychiatrist on HBO’s In Treatment and right now what he’s prescribing for his home country is justice.

“I think when Madoff was put in jail here, a lot of people felt there was some kind of retribution, some kind of closure,” he says.

“That doesn’t seem to be happening over there.”

It’s now over two years since the Irish government gave a blanket guarantee to the debts and liabilities of Irish banks, and details started to emerge of suspicious financial transactions at Anglo Irish Bank.

In the intervening years, bankers like Sean Fitzpatrick and David Drumm have become social pariahs in their home country, but no-one has been prosecuted.

The Garda Fraud Bureau and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement have been investigating alleged wrongdoings at Anglo and other banks.

But no-one has yet ended up behind bars.

And unlike most other countries who have been suffering the effects of the global recession, there has not been an election until now.

Since the crisis began, Barack Obama has been elected US president and his party has suffered a ‘shellacking’ in the Mid-Terms.

In the UK, the government of Gordon Brown has been turfed-out of office to be replaced by a coalition of David Cameron’s Conservative Party and Nick Clegg’s Liberals.

But in Ireland, Brian Cowen and his government have continued in office.

There’s a real hope that if the upcoming election offers nothing else, it will offer an opportunity to draw a line in the sand – to look forward, instead of constantly looking back and pointing the finger of blame.

Byrne says he’s noticed that Irish people now seem to carry a strange guilt about the Celtic Tiger.

“I hear sometimes when I’m talking to people ‘Oh we shouldn’t have done that’ and a certain amount of shame in it,” he says.

But he says the truth is, not everybody got carried away. Not everyone partied.

“I don’t think everybody had a great time during the Celtic Tiger. I think it’s perceived that the entire country went crazy and everybody overspent.”

The election has led to loud calls for political reform in Ireland, with talk of “Reclaiming the Republic” and so forth.

“Funnily enough, they are saying the same things here,” says Byrne, “there are politicians who are saying ‘Let’s take America back’.

“But back from what, to what…I don’t know.”

Byrne sees echoes of the mood which spawned the Tea Party in the US in the Irish situation.

“There is a certain amount of anger, real anger, on the ground with the system here in the US that may or may not translate into action.

“But I think the Mid-Terms proved that Americans had a voice. And they sent the Democrats a harsh lesson.”

In Ireland, he sees a similar desire among ordinary people to let their political masters know that they are angry, and that they are too disconnected from the people.

But Byrne remains unconvinced that real change will happen.

“The truth is, from my point of view, what can actually happen? A coalition of the parties that are there already without real political reform, really fundamental political reform, I don’t know that that’s going to change anything.”

“How does one harness the legitimate anger that’s on the ground and use it to reclaim politics, to reclaim the system of government?

“Classically that’s a time when an alternative radical party could come into power, either from the right or from the left.

“And a radical shift to the right or the left in Ireland is something that I still wouldn’t rule out, but I think that unless there is a real profound change in the political system, like in Washington, then it’s just going to be more of the same.”

He smiles at me, “Is that too pessimistic a view?”

We’re not even here to talk about politics.

We’re here to talk about art.

Byrne is Ireland’s Cultural Ambassador and in that role he’s been spearheading the promotion of a year-long festival of Irish arts in the United States called “Imagine Ireland”.

It’s the biggest ever tour of Irish music, theatre, visual arts and dance in the US, taking in 40 states.

The Irish government has justified the $5m cost of the tour – saying it will open new cultural links, promote Ireland as a tourist destination and cast Ireland in a positive light at a time when we are in international headlines for all the wrong reasons.

But Byrne is unhappy at the spin being put on it.

“Economically we will recover,” he says, “But artistically we have never been set back.”

“Economically, Ireland has gotten a lot of bad press here obviously.

“But this isn’t about ‘oh now let’s tell the good news’. Irish culture consistently has always been evolving, and it will continue to do that through good times and bad.

“It’s been the story of our history, how our artists have turned great sorrows and great tribulations into amazing art.”

He knows too well that the general public may baulk at seeing millions being spent on art at a time when money is scarce.

“In and of itself, it is not going to put bread on the table, nor will it stop immigration.

“But perhaps artists can lead the way, and lead the way for politicians to reexamine the nature of the society we inhabit.

“Because art will transform a society as fast as a politician, in a more profound way I deeply believe.”

Byrne speaks of the potential of art, particularly in a recession, to offer hope and inspiration with a deep passion.

“I’m very interested in getting the message of art, and community art, across to young people, and how powerful the presence of art can be in your life, how it can break down barriers, social barriers, and can free the imagination.

“Introducing that concept into the lives of young people is one of the goals that I have.”

He says at a local level, a drama society can offer somewhere to escape the prevailing mood of depression and negativity, and offer something, for want of a better word, happy.

“I’m a huge supporter of the Irish Amateur Drama group, you know, because that combines social and artistic functions that only another organization say like the GAA can fulfill.”

“In these times especially it’s really important the people have unfettered access at least to the world of the imagination.

“Because the world of the imagination can show us ways to deal perhaps with the economic crisis we are currently going through.

“I’m not saying it’s the answer, but I’m saying it at least provides perspective”

[This article appears in this week's issue of the Irish Examiner USA]