Neil Martin, Glenn Patterson

These two artists co-created last year the highly-acclaimed and award-nominated – Long Story Short: The Belfast Opera. Tickets for all three performances sold out in a few hours.

They also previously collaborated on The Great and First Object, for the Linen Hall Library. For this unique performance they draw on their extensive individual repertoires - words and music on humour and love and loss and dismay and hope and wonderment.

Belfast-born Neil Martin is a composer and musician with an international reputation who enjoys a most varied and rewarding career encompassing dance, opera, theatre, film, television, radio, concert hall and studio. A cellist and an uilleann piper, he has collaborated with many leading artists, from Liam O'Flynn, Bryn Terfel, Sam Shepard, Christy Moore, Stephen Rea, Jean Butler and Barry Douglas to the LSO, RPO and all the principle orchestras in Ireland.

Glenn Patterson, Writer and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s, is the author of thirteen novels, the most recent of which is Gull (2016). The Mill for Grinding Old People Young (2012) was Belfast’s first One City One Book choice. He has also written and presented numerous television documentaries and an arts review series for RTE.