January 25, 2009
Chinese New Year festival

So I attended The Silk and Bamboo Trio's concert at the Hugh Lane Gallery and I enjoyed it immensely. The happy and joyous sounds of the Chinese instruments consisting of traditional wind and stringed instruments to romantic and celebratory tunes left me breathless at times. In my mind, it was bringing up images of old China, images I would have seen on t.v., pictures from books. It was definitely a great experience to listen to these three musicians, no amps or anything. The room filled up fast. With a quick glance, around a half dozen or so of Asians were amongst the many Irish attending the concert.

Content with the concert, we headed to the green by The Church beside the Jervis centre. It was getting cold, so we headed into The Church for a bite to eat, and the wind and rain began with gusto. Therefore we pretty much missed the opening ceremony, lion dance and all. Although after our lunch and some drinks, we headed outside, and caught the Silk and Bamboo Trio again, but playing outdoors on stage did not sound as good as it was in the Hugh Lane.

The stands around the area were few, and half were empty. The Asian Market was prominent, another stand selling fans, Western Union giving away freebies, Meteor and another on Living in Ireland. No food stalls or anything. Very disappointing.

One thing though, I found out that An Post has release the year of the ox stamps, tempted to buy one.

Anyway, I felt overall, the concert was fantastic, the carnival, shall I say, a wash-out.

[UPDATE] RTE News mentioned it - Chinese welcome in Year of the Ox, tepid mention at that.

Posted by whykay at January 25, 2009 05:37 PM