Eastside Arts Festival, August 19 to 31, various venues
THE Eastside Arts Festival returns to Belfast later this month, with this year's headline-grabbing event being a pair of shows by Van Morrison on the east Belfast street immortalised in his song Cyprus Avenue (August 31).
With both the 3pm matinee and 6pm evening performances already sold-out, the only way you're getting near the Belfast bard's birthday bash (he turns 70 on the day) at this point is if you have a spare £300k to £600k lying around to buy a house on one of east Belfast's most famous thoroughfares, thus making yourself eligible for free residents' tickets.
However, fans of lesser means who've missed out can still get a live fix of Van The Man courtesy of the Van Morrison Songbook (August 30) event at Culturlann.
This 'Eastside goes West' show will feature Dick Farrelly and Mary Ryan's Irish language interpretations of his songs, plus more traditional renditions of Morrison favourites from Ken Haddock, Anthony Toner and Matt McGinn.
Indeed, there's plenty of other music on offer from the festival, including gigs by David C Clements (August 20), Soak (August 22), Duke Special and Malojian (August 26) and The 4 Of Us (August 29) at the Strand Arts Centre.
:: Tickets and full festival programme information at Eastsidearts.net.
