Music/News: 10 Mar 2017
The Hot Press Newsdesk

13 Irish Acts To Showcase on World’s Biggest Stage

The list of 13 Irish acts set to perform at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference in Austin, Texas has just been announced.

Music From Ireland will showcase at this year’s SXSW Music in Austin, Texas at The Velveetta Room on St Patrick’s Day (17 March) and the now infamous ‘Full Irish Breakfast’ at BD Riley’s on 6th St on 16 March featuring performances from:

A.S. Fanning

Birds of Olympus

Ciaran Lavery

Cloud Castle Lake

EMBRZ

Jealous of the Birds

Loah

New Portals

Picture This

Robocobra Quartet

Ryan Vail

Silences

The Academic

"First Music Contact and Culture Ireland are pleased to present Music From Ireland at SXSW 2017, bringing Ireland’s finest exports to showcase globally," it was announced in a statement. "The Music From Ireland initiative will see further showcases later this year in strong markets for Irish music, including The Great Escape, Canadian Music Week, Reeperbahn Hamburg, M for Montreal, Iceland Airwaves and MONDO NYC."

Casper Mills, SXSW Music Programmer, attended last year's Hard Working Class Heroes Festival where he saw performances from A.S. Fanning, Birds of Olympus, Loah and Jealous of the Birds.

“With past festival showcase line-ups including Villagers, Lisa Hannigan, James Vincent McMorrow, Saint Sister, Rusangano Family, Hozier, Kodaline and many, many more. Music from Ireland’s official SXSW showcase is always a highlight for us as well as the international delegates who come to SXSW to do business," says Casper Mills.

In a press release to announce the names of the 13 Irish acts, First Music Contact and Culture Ireland said they are “pleased to present Music From Ireland at SXSW 2017, bringing Ireland’s finest exports to showcase globally”.

The statement added, “The track record of successes of the Music from Ireland programme at South by Southwest has been substantial in recent years and both Culture Ireland and First Music Contact are committed to expanding on this with the current crop of emerging Irish talent.”

Full details including times and venue details are available on the Music from Ireland website: http://musicfromireland.org/

Music from Ireland is a First Music Contact project delivered in partnership with Culture Ireland which presents the Irish showcases at large international music conferences, including The Great Escape, SXSW, Eurosonic, CMJ and Canadian Music Week.

Culture Ireland creates and supports opportunities for Irish artists and the international presentation of their work. It operates a grant programme providing travel supports for artists across genres and artforms and in addition, runs a strategic Showcase programme at high-profile Festivals and industry events including the Edinburgh Festivals, the London Book Fair, Tanzmesse, Womex, Classical NEXT and the Venice Biennale. In addition, it also grant-aids visits to Ireland by programmers and presenters to interact with Irish artists in Ireland including Hard Working Class Heroes and Tradfest 2017.

First Contact Music is a free information and advice resource for musicians and the independent music sector in Ireland. First Contact Music is behind several projects helping artist development, including Breaking Tunes, HWCH, Music From Ireland and The FMC Tour.