Any normal year, a frosty dawn around this time would mean stumbling home after a Christmas after-party that went a bit too far, calling to a 24-hour Centra for a bottle of Lucozade.
But as we roll into another year of abnormality, here’s another series of State-sponsored Covid-friendly gigs, after we thought we’d seen the back of them with the short-lived full club and venue reopening period.
A Frosty Dawn is taken from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem A Christmas Childhood, and “aims to evoke images of what this time of year means to people and how it brings people closer to their loved ones,” says Dublin City Council.
If the safe-bet family-friendly sounds of Picture This, Ryan Sheridan, Hudson Taylor and Gavin James don’t float your boat for the council’s NYE concerts, A Frosty Dawn is a really well-curated series for fans of more leftfield music.
Tonight, Nialler9 curates a show headlined by the Glasshouse Ensemble, with their take on tunes from the likes of Kate Bush, Bjork, Ryuchi Sakamoto, David Bowie and Prince, arranged for a chamber orchestra and vocalists.
Tomorrow, it’s a night of experimental electronica, field recordings and modern composition with Ordnance Survey, Gareth Quinn Redmond and Dreamcycles, while folk-rock group Scullion close off the weekend.
A capella group The The Key Notes play Monday and Tuesday, while it gets a little bit more leftfield on Wednesday, with Death In Vegas’s Richard Fearless presenting a live AV electronic show, with blues rock singer Bronagh Gallagher finishing off the series on Thursday night, with Steve Wall and Dublin Gospel Choir.
Each event will also feature a newly commissioned light and visual installation projected on the church — one of Dublin’s most intimate performance spaces.
See afrostydawn.ie
Moo Kid 