The Whistling Girl

Event Description

The acclaimed Irish duo, singer and actress Honor Heffernan and composer/ keyboard player Trevor Knight proudly present their new Cabaret/Speakeasy-style show, “The Whistling Girl”. Trevor Knight has transformed the poems of Dorothy Parker into songs, using her witty, droll and sometimes heart rending lyrics which are uniquely interpreted by Honor Heffernan.

A band of top Irish musicians including Garvan Gallagher bass, Tom Jamieson drums, Ed Deane electric guitar, Ciaran Wilde saxophone’s, Bill Blackmore horns and Trevor Knight keyboards, will be fronted by vocalist and actress Honor Heffernan.

“I shall stay the way I am, because I do not give a damn!”

Dorothy Parker

Knight cleverly makes Parker’s lyrics relevant to the modern world by blending them with musical styles that emerged later than the period of Parker’s flourishing in the 1920’s and later decades. It had echoes of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil, as well as some of the keyboards flourishes familiar to fans of Ray Manzarek of The Doors, a touch of Kraftwerk here, and Mark Knopfler there and Leonard Cohen somewhere else.

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 a duo album ‘Two Heads Are Better than One’ most recently with guitarist Hugh Buckley. 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 - St. Johns Theatre

Since then St. John's has become a premier venue in the South West for the promotion of a monthly programme of Visual and Performing Arts, featuring the best local, national and international product in Theatre, Music, Dance and Exhibitions. Annually St. John's hosts approximately 160 Arts events comprising of 80 Theatre presentations, 60 Music/Dance events and 20 Exhibitions.