Entertainment

Just announced: Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival

!!! feature in the musical line-up for this year's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
!!! feature in the musical line-up for this year's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival !!! feature in the musical line-up for this year's Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival

THE Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival (CQAF) will return to Belfast from May 3 to 13 this year, bringing its reliably eclectic cocktail of alternative culture to venues around the city (but mainly The Black Box).

The 19th CQAF features a bumper crop of musical turns over its 11 days including; Jimmy Webb, Robyn Hitchcock, Ben Folds, Mary Gauthier, Nightmares on Wax, The Go! Team, Barence Whitfield and The Savages, !!!, Joshua Burnside (this year's artist in residence), This is The Kit, Kate Rusby, Beans on Toast, The Blasters, I’m With Her, Bedouine, Smoove & Turrell Soundsystem, Asian Dub Foundation (doing a live soundtrack to French film classic La Haine), Peter 'Only Ones' Perrett, Jeffrey Lewis, Camille O’Sullivan, Michael Chapman, Pee Wee Ellis Funk Assembly, David Rodigan, King Creosote, Lankum and Georgie Fame.

Their comedy line-up is none-too-shabby either, featuring as it does Rob Newman, Bridget Christie, Luisa Omielan, Sarah Kendall, Joanne McNally, Shazia Mirza, Scott Capurro and Ayesha Hazarika.

On the spoken word front, this year CQAF will welcome to Belfast poet Paul Durcan, country star Kimmie Rhodes in conversation with Ralph McLean, Stuart Bailie talking Trouble Songs, Spacemen 3 survivor Will Carruthers on memoir Playing The Bass with Three Left Hands, veteran music hack David Hepworth discussing his book Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of The Rock Stars, Scissors, Paper, Stone author Elizabeth Day picking over her latest, The Party and folk legend Peggy Seeger taking us back to her First Time Ever.

All this, plus theatre and film too – check out the full programme on-line now at CQAF.com