The Lyric Feature

On this week’s Lyric Feature, we remember the poet, lecturer and regular contributor to our programmes Gerald Dawe who died last month.

Michael O’Shea was a musician from Carlingford, Co Louth who released one self-titled album in 1982 that is now regarded as a masterpiece of the Psychedelic Folk genre. Performed on oak door rescued from a skip in Munich.

‘Discovered’ by Guglielmo Marconi while singing at a fashionable soiree in London, the famous inventor subsequently brought Sheridan to Italy, to pursue her dream of becoming an opera singer.

As a child, Bairbre O'Hogan remembers her mother bringing an elderly friend to do her weekly shopping in Dún Laoghaire. Bairbre knew her as MrsVerschoyle, she only later appreciated just how successful and prolific an author she had been.

To mark the centenary of her birth, Liz Nolan explores the life and legacy of Maria Callas, the iconic Greek soprano, widely regarded as the most significant, inspiring and provocative opera star of the modern age.

Lapwings are any of various ground-nesting birds akin to plovers and dotterels. They range from 10 to 16 inches in length, and are noted for their slow, irregular wingbeats in flight and a shrill, wailing cry.

Jays are colourful, vocal, and highly intelligent woodland birds. In this episode ecologist Anja Murray and musician Brían Mac Gloinn meet ornithologist Seán Ronayne in an autumn woodland to listen to stories these birds’ incredible capacity for mimicry.

Feather and Flock is a new six part series delving in to the ways of six iconic native Irish birds. Each episode combines ecology, folklore and history to uncover the incredible lives and journeys of these wild creatures. We begin with the Cuckoo.

Laoise O’Brien has spent the past twenty-five years championing an instrument often unfairly perceived as an instrument of torture, the recorder. Join Laoise as she embarks on a journey to tell the story of the recorder and its development during the ages.