RTÉ lyric fm 96-99fm Where Life Sounds Better
The Lyric Feature
Friday, 7-8pm
The Lyric Feature presents original documentaries and music specials.
You can now access previous Lyric Feature documentaries, features and music specials in our programme archives.
To access the 2011 archive, click here
To access the 2010 archive, click here
To access the 2009 archive, click here
The Sea in Song
Winner of the Silver Medal in the History category at the New York Festivals 2011
A 3-part series celebrating Ireland's maritime song tradition. Historians may have neglected our maritime heritage, but our singers have not and a good song can give us a feel for life at sea better than any text book can. Discover a song chest of rousing sea shanties, ballads of hardship and heroism as well as heartrending tales of love, loss, betrayal and revenge.
Programme 1: Hard Men to Shave - Friday January 20th
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Programme one explores key narratives in the sea shanties and ballads of the 19th century and taps into some hair-raising accounts of life at sea for Ireland's ocean mariners in the age of sail powered ships.
Programme 2: The Tumbling Wave - Friday January 27th
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The second programme sifts through the huge collection of Irish coastal songs to retrieve vivid tales of shipwrecks, smugglers, drownings and heroic rescues.
Programme 3: Love is Tempestuous - Friday February 3rd
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Some of our most powerful laments and romantic ballads were inspired by events at sea. The concluding programme in the series pursues themes of love and loss through motifs such as the maid on the shore, the female sailor and the mermaid in traditional maritime song.
The series is produced and presented by Mary Owens. An independent production for RTÉ lyric fm by Well Said Productions and made with the support of the Sound & Vision Broadcasting Funding Scheme, a Broadcasting Authority of Ireland initiative.
(First broadcast: 29th December 2010)
Series Producer for RTÉ lyric fm: Olga Buckley
Production Co-ordinator: Eoin O Kelly
Word of Mouth: The Story of Fighting Words
Friday January 13th
This programme goes out in place of the advertised programme on Angela Gheorghiu. We apolgise for any disappointment.
A programme following a year in the life of the creative writing centre, Fighting Words, developed by the award-winning Irish writer Roddy Doyle and the former director of Amnesty Ireland, Sean Love, and located in the heart of Dublin city. The centre fosters and mentors writing, particularly for children and teenagers, across all forms of expressions including fiction, drama, poetry, music and film. Word of Mouth tells the story of the Wednesday Write Club, where young writers aged 15-19 work side by side with Doyle himself, and of a transition year class from Scoil Chaitríona, who produced their own book of short stories called 'Lost in Transition'.
An Athena Media Production for RTÉ lyric fm
Word of Mouth is supported by the BAI Sound & Vision Funding Scheme
Christopher Lynch, the Boy from Rathkeale
In October 1946 a new voice was heard by millions of American radio listeners to the Firestone radio programme on NBC. The singer's debut performance before a live audience of 3,000 people in Carnegie Hall, which was broadcast from Alaska to Mexico, created a sensation and he became a household name as The Voice of Firestone. The singer was the 26-year old tenor Christopher Lynch from Rathkeale in Co. Limerick, whose first major public performance had taken place in the Savoy in Limerick only 3 years earlier. His meteoric rise to fame, assisted by the O'Mara family and by John McCormack, who said he was the person most likely to succeed him, is the subject of tonight's programme. Produced by Doireann Ni Bhriain, the programme features many recordings by this remarkable singer, as well as interviews with members of his family and others who remember the man and the voice.
Material from the Voice of Firestone programmes was used with the kind permission of the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A
A Fuaim Production for RTÉ lyric fm, made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland's Sound and Vision Broadcasting Funding Scheme.
Child's Play - 30th December 2011
Child's Play
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Recorded in Kampala, Uganda this radio feature illustrates how music and performance is influencing the community and lives of former 'street children' in this troubled and chaotic city. With strong musical themes the programme examines how two special schools and one unique charity cater for the marginalised in Ugandan society through expert guidance and the supply of second hand classical instruments. Central contributions for the documentary come from the Kampala based Tender Talents, the M-LISADA Brass Band, UK based Musequality and members of Irish Aid.
Made with the support of the 'Simon Cumbers Media Fund'.
Written and Produced by Michael O'Kane.
The Kilmore Carols - Friday 23rd December
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The Kilmore Carols have been sung in the village church in Kilmore, Co Wexford each Christmas since the 1750's. Ethereal and mystical in character, the carols are always sung by six men from the village during Communion at each mass between Christmas Eve and Epiphany. The carols, whose dark lyrics refer to Herod presiding over baths of infants' blood, replaced the mass at a time when churches had been razed and priests driven out. The programme brings listeners to the candlelit village church in the depths of a dark and icy Kilmore winter to meet the farmers, fishermen and hauliers who are today's guardians of a musical tradition dating back to Penal times in a parish with a long memory.
A Laura Haydon Production for RTÉ lyric fm. Made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland Sound and Vision Broadcasting Funding Scheme.
Broadcasting Partnerships: RTÉ Lyric fm and the BAI Sound and Vision Funding Scheme
The closing date for the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland's Sound & Vision Broadcasting Funding Scheme Round 13 is the 27th January 2012.
Independent producers and production companies who wish to apply for broadcast partnership with RTÉ Lyric fm for Round 13 of the scheme must submit a detailed synopsis, treatment and an outline budget for their proposed programmes no later than January 13th 2012.
The email address for applications is features.lyricfm@rte.ie
For more on the scheme see the BAI website
School's Never Out
School's Never Out - Moffatt Oxenbould remembers Joan Sutherland
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Moffatt Oxenbould was Artistic Director of Opera Australia from 1984 until his retirement in 1999. Since his retirement he still directs with Opera Australia and Houston Grand Opera, and is a presenter with the Australian classical music radio station ABC Classic FM. Earlier this year Liz Nolan interviewed him for a Lyric Feature tribute programme La Stupenda on his colleague the late Joan Sutherland. Here is a chance to hear that heartfelt and insightful interview in full with a selection of performances by the great diva at her exhilarating best.
Presented by Liz Nolan
Produced by Eoin O Kelly
Farrell and Flegg's Crafty Capers
In a new 3-part series 'Farrell and Flegg's Crafty Capers', craft mavens Laura Farrell and Eleanor Flegg set off in search of the devastated heart of Irish craft and design. Threading their way around an island of liquidators and creditors meetings, they meet the resilient makers who are staking their reputations that craft and design have a sustainable future.
Programme 1: (25th November 2011) Designer Laura and design writer Eleanor look to the vernacular and traditional in Irish craft meeting along the way Edward Byrne, Ireland's traditional lime guru, Yaffe-Mays, a duo who create and destroy furniture to give it meaning, and Denis Kenny, Ireland's reigning rug lord.
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Programme 2: (2nd December 2011) : The further adventures of Farrell and Flegg take us to where craft and technology meet to create designs that might have William Morris or Eileen Grey turning in their graves. In this programme we encounter Tom Watts, who doesn't hang around when it comes to wall coverings, Joe Curley who sheds some special light on the workplace and Sasha Sykes blows holes in Ireland's design heritage.
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Programme 3: (9th December 2011) In this, the last of the capers, Farrell and Flegg ask if craft and design really can make the world a better place. On the way they meet Tom Roche, a man on a crusade to convince pop stars to only use instruments made from sustainable woods; the Equatillt chair design team who take the pain out of playing in an orchestra and Eoin Turner, the glass artist who will ease your final journey.
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A Soundsdoable production for RTÉ lyric fm.
The programme was made with the support of the Broadcast Authority of Ireland's Sound and Vision Broadcasting Funding Scheme.
John Field: Pearls on Velvet
Friday November 11th: Programme 1
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Friday November 18th: Programme 2
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Jim Sherwin explores the life and music of John Field, the man credited with the invention of the Nocturne. Contributors include Nobel poetry laureate Seamus Heaney, who explains the impetus behind his poem about Field, and Veronica McSwiney whose Claddagh recording of Field's Nocturnes in the 1970's introduced a whole new generation of listeners to his work. These two programmes examine the influence Field had on Chopin, his early years as a pupil of Muzio Clementi in London and his eventual move to Russia, where he is buried in the Vedensky cemetery in Moscow. The programme features performances of his nocturnes and concertos by a variety of pianists including John O'Conor, Míceál O'Rourke, Alan Etherden and Veronica McSwiney.
Franz Liszt: Lion at the Keyboard
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When: Friday, 7-8pm
Producer: Olga Buckley
Production Co-ordinator:
Eoin O Kelly
Email: features.lyricfm@rte.ie
