More Information
Event Description
Featuring new musical settings of the great Dorothy Parker
The Whistling Girl
Trevor Knight and Honor Heffernan are delighted to present a new show, “The Whistling Girl”, featuring musical settings of the poetry of the great Dorothy Parker, creating a darkly sardonic body of work in which the American wit and critic’s poetry is transported into the 21st century and given a sonic face-lift fusing ‘dirty’-cabaret, electronic-vaudeville, rock and jazz, combined with underscored original recordings of Parker’s voice.
Each of the songs are infused with a unique ‘voice’, creating individual tableaux or dream moments from Parker’s psyche, conjuring up images from her tempestuous life of outrageous celebrity, as founding member of the notorious Algonquin set in New York, and as civil rights activist in America and Spain during the Spanish Civil War.
A band of top Irish musicians including Garvan Gallagher bass, Tom Jamieson drums, Ed Deane, electric guitar and Trevor Knight keyboards, will be fronted by vocalist and actress Honor Heffernan.
With this production, Dorothy Parker’s poetry and prose will be opened to a wide audience through exciting musical idioms that will breathe new life into the work of this great American literary icon.
“I shall stay the way I am, because I do not give a damn!”
– (Dorothy Parker)
Trevor Knight is a composer/ performer/ director composing music for more than 80 theatrical productions including the award winning “Catalpa” with Donal O’Kelly, and has collaborated many times with artist Alice Maher (Cassandra’s Necklace @IMMA, The Music of Things, London and New York) and Japanese butoh performers Gyohei Zaitsu and Maki Watanabe (The Devil’s Spine Band, Visitant and Slat) and as an actor recently in Beckett’s “Rough for Theatre 1”(Dublin Fringe 2013 and Tokyo Japan 2014)
His band Auto da Fé with singer Gay Woods released 3 albums in the 1980’s. He has toured and recorded with artists such as Philip Lynott, Donovan, Camille O’Sullivan, Roger Doyle, Luka Bloom and Paul Brady.
In March 2007 he became a member of Aosdana, Ireland’s state sponsored academy of creative artists.
Honor Heffernan is an internationally acclaimed jazz singer has been performing as both a singer and actress for over 30 years. She has been both critically and publicly acclaimed as a singer whose versatility and superior vocal ability means she is comfortable singing anything from Jazz and Blues to Rock and Folk. She has three solo albums to her credit. ‘Chasing the Moon’. ‘Fire and Ice’ and ‘The Other Side’, and has written her own songs which she hopes to record in the near future.
She has toured in India with her jazz quartet and lived and performed in Canada for two years and has also appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Choral Society in the Royal Albert Hall in a celebration of Beatles music and worked with the BBC Big Band and RTE Concert Orchestra.
As an actress she has appeared in Neil Jordan’s ‘Angel’, Lennie Abrahmson’s ‘Prosperity’. . She starred in Ireland’s favourite soap ‘Fair City’, and rural soap opera, ‘Glenroe’. RTE‘s ‘Live Mike’ with Mike Murphy Roddy Doyle’s, ‘Family’. Shane Connaughton’s ‘Divisions’, Tom Murphy’s ‘Blue Macushla’. The Gasworks Theatre production of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, playing Blanche du Bois. Noel Pearson’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Abbey Theatre’s production of ‘Drama at Inish’, The Tivoli Theatre’s production of ‘Blues in the Night’ directed by Carol Todd, the part of Grace Farrell in the Olympia Theatre’s production of ‘Annie’, and Jimmy Murphy’s ‘Castlecomer Jukebox’, presented by Red Kettle Theatre Company.
Location of event
Venue Information - Magistorium
Magistorium, located on the site of the legendary McGonagles, has been reincarnated as a magnificent theatre like venue that plays host to the most eclectic performances and cultural events you will find anywhere in Dublin, as well as offering guests the option to dine, a nod to its previous life as The Crystal Ballroom. Magistorium is a place that encapsulates the best elements Irish entertainment has to offer presented in a non-stereotypical way. Magistorium offers guests the hottest in traditional, jazz cabaret and world music, catering for all tastes, ages and interests. We are sure you will feel at home in Magistorium.