How do you unwind at the weekend?
As a freelance, the seven days of the week are similar so Saturday, Sunday and Monday merge. What I love about being a composer, though, is that no two days are the same. Last weekend I and my wife Siobhan, who's a music specialist, went to the QFT to see The Duke with Jim Broadbent. It's got a beautiful script, and is brilliantly and comically played.
What do you recall most about weekends growing up?
I grew up with music in the house. We lived off the Antrim Road in Belfast and every Sunday, my mother Margaret would make the fry and my father Brian, who managed a TV shop, would get out the LPs. He had the most amazing record collection - everything from Bach and Beethoven to Ry Cooder, the Beatles, traditional music and the score to Clockwork Orange. My first memory is of Bach's B minor Mass, and the movement I most strongly remember is the Kyrie Eleison. I started out playing classical music on the piano at six, took up the cello at eight, the tin whistle at nine. My life has been the spaces in between.
Is there a must-listen weekend radio programme or podcast?
Brian Mullen's world music show on Radio Ulster, Caschlár. It's presented in Irish and his Gaelic is so softly paced. Mullen's knowledge is encyclopaedic and it opens a door.
Is there a must-watch TV programme or Netflix?
For the first time ever on Sunday night I watched a full episode of Peaky Blinders. I thought it was bloody brilliant, reminiscent of The Godfather and The Sopranos. Without being too bold, I had dinner with Cillian Murphy in New York a few years ago when I was out doing Sam Shepard's last play, A Particle of Dread. Stephen Rea, a colleague for 34 years in Field Day which put it on, Enda Walsh, Cillian and I went to a restaurant opposite the theatre.
Is Sunday still special?
There is a little more relaxation to it. I love to cook and would spend two to three hours making something.
Do you have a favourite eatery or is it a takeaway?
Here I like Ox and recently had a great meal at The Muddlers Club. But I guess the restaurant I went to in New York that night, the West Bank Café on 42nd Street is special. We ate there about five nights a week during the run. I was back in New York a year later. The barman Ken saw me and just said, "Is it red wine, Neil?" An hour later he asked me if I was dining and said, "Let me guess, Bolognese rigatoni?"
How do you feel on Sunday night about Monday morning?
I love to get a jump start. So if I'm writing something on Sunday, I'd deliberately not finish it. There's no dread.
Nobody/Somebody is an NI Opera production created by Neil Martin and playwright Fionnuala Kennedy for and with teenagers around the issues of housing stress and homelessness. A 'work in development' performance as part of Belfast Children's Festival will be held at 4pm today at Carlisle Memorial Church in Belfast. Book at niopera.com.
