Jazz Connector: Best Practices for Pitching Music Projects to Multi-disciplinary Arts Festivals

Continuing our Jazz Connector online meet-ups with a focus on career development, IMC would like to invite the Irish music community to come together for an interactive presentation, Q&A session and chat on Thursday Jan 20th from 7:00 - 8:30PM. Please register your interest to attend.

The topic at hand is:

Best Practices for Pitching Music Projects to Multi-disciplinary Arts Festivals

We’ll be joined by Clíona Maher, the Artistic Director of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival & Paul Fahy, the Artistic Director of Galway International Arts Festival.

Clíona Maher is a Clonmel native who has over 25 years’ experience working in the arts. She is a graduate of the Gaiety School of Acting with a Masters in Modern Drama Studies from UCD. Over her career, she has worked as both an arts manager, and a theatre practitioner. On returning to Ireland from France with her family in 2017, she took up the position of Artistic Director of South Tipperary Arts Centre, where she co-founded the Finding A Voice concert series, before moving to her current job as Artistic Director of Clonmel Junction Arts Festival in April 2019.

Clonmel Junction Arts Festival (CJAF) was founded in 2001 to celebrate touring theatre and live music. 20 years later it is the pre-eminent arts organisation in Clonmel, providing a platform for regional and national artists, the infrastructure to develop a body of professional arts workers in the town, and a hub for national and international artists to share space and ideas with a large urban town at the heart of a rural hinterland.

Paul Fahy has been the Artistic Director of Galway International Arts Festival since 2005. Prior to this he worked as a freelance arts publicist and producer with organisations such as Macnas, Baboró, Rough Magic Theatre Company, The Abbey Theatre, The Arts Council of Ireland and actor Cillian Murphy.

He programmed and produced the Cúirt International Festival of Literature & was one of the key visual arts curators for Galway Arts Centre from

1990-1999. He was the Consultant Programme Director with Kilkenny Arts Festival from 1999–2003 for whom he also directed and designed a major street theatre spectacle “The Art of the Game”.
Paul studied art at the RTC Galway (now GMIT). He received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from NUI Galway in 2017.

The multidisciplinary Galway International Arts Festival takes place each July and covers a range of art forms. The festival programme includes Irish and international work of the highest quality, featuring theatre, music, visual arts, opera, street spectacle, dance, discussion and comedy.

Guest Speakers:
Clíona Maher
Paul Fahy

Guest speakers will be expressing their own personal views and will not necessarily be speaking on behalf of their various companies/employers.

If you missed out on any of our previous meetups, you can read all of the talking points that were discussed here.

Join us at this ZOOM link on Thursday January 20th at 7:00PM

Please register your interest here to attend.

You can also let us know if there are any particular topics that you would like us to cover in this or future discussions. Places are limited so be sure to let us know if you’d like to join in!