Venue: Kevin Barry Room, National Concert Hall.

The multdisciplinary collaborative festival Snakes & Ladders throws exciting new light on Irish cultural invention that is grounded in international contemporary arts practice. Snakes and Ladders 2008 at New York's World Financial Center was the largest ever commissioning (to date) of cutting-edge new Irish music, and the latest instalment is even bigger and better.

Specialising in the accessible face of contemporary composition, Snakes & Ladders runs the gamut from musique concrete to piano recital, free-improvisation to avant folk, metal to electronica. The event is undoubtedly the pre-eminent Irish showcase for unique cross-disciplinary collaborations, connections, commissions, provocations and agitations.

For the second year of Snakes & Ladders, composer/curator Daniel Figgis returns the music to his native Ireland in tandem with exciting new video works from some of the country's leading emergent visual artists together with inventive and provocative (yet hugely entertaining) soundworks for Dublin's National Concert Hall, Wexford Opera House and (not so unusual as you might think) Tranquillity Spa @ Whites Hotel, Wexford. Following these dates November, Snakes & Ladders returns to New York City (Broadway) January 2010.

Central to this groundbreaking, artist-led initiative is the live concert featuring musical performances across a spectrum of disciplines. The concert will be accompanied by the new video works (all commissioned by Daniel Figgis); these are specific to Snakes & Ladders, and are presented as a view of and a gateway to a constant stream of information and sensory overload.

In other words... An Entertainment.

"world-beating... Marvellous... hyperintelligent... (Daniel Figgis) is Ireland's leading avant-garde composer"
HOT PRESS (Ireland)

"Daniel introduces a deceptive lightness of invention to areas of contemporary music rarely noted for their grace or good humour"
THE WIRE (UK)

Dates:

Kevin Barry Room
National Concert Hall, Dublin
Friday November 13 2009

Jerome Hynes Theatre
Wexford Opera House
Saturday November 14 2009

Leonard Nimoy Thalia
Symphony Space Broadway, New York
Friday January 8 2010

Ancillary events:

Daniel Figgis' THE JABLONSKI SUITE
Tranquillity Spa, Whites Hotel, Wexford
Saturday-Sunday November 14-15

Daniel Figgis' AUDITORIUM
-a "Reflux" event
O'Reilly Theatre, Wexford Opera House
(A Wexford Opera House commission)
Monday-Tuesday November 16-19

For More Information: