The audience at the first Cave event in 2011.
Acts Announced for the Mitchelstown Caves
A series of concerts held in the Mitchelstown Caves, near Cahir, County Tipperary, will take place for the third time this July. Those attending descend the eighty-eight steps into one of the caves, where the temperature is a constant twelve degrees.
This summer’s acts have been announced as Róisín Ó and Liam Ó Maonlái (19 July); Soak and Declan O’Rourke (20 July); and Henry Girls and the West Cork Ukelele Orchestra (21 July).
Writing in The Journal of Music in 2011, Aoife Flynn recounted the first Cave event.
Small pockets of people gathered at the entrance to Michelstown Caves, well armed with heavy coats and scarves despite the balmy, summer night. Cork Opera House – the concert’s organiser – had warned that the cave would be twelve degrees Celsius; a whole lot colder than it sounds when you’re sitting still for two hours, but entirely worth it for this most unusual of concerts.
We walked through an unfeasibly small door and descended the eighty-eight steps into the Tír na nÓg cave – I had to think of Alice and her rabbit hole – guided by the torchlights of volunteers, past tantalisingly tactile-looking stalagmites and stalactites. Signs warned, ‘Do Not Touch.’ We finally emerged into a large cave with the most perfect natural stage – and the most basic of stage setups.
Read the full account here.
Tickets to the Cave cost €35 and can be booked from Cork Opera House.
