Tickets are selling fast for Mary Coughlan who will play a concert at Arklow’s newest venue the Asgard Theatre.
The concert starts at 8pm and tickets are available online at gr8events.ie
Admission is €30.
A song is not complete unless it has been sung by Mary Coughlan”, claimed the music paper, Melody Maker. “Mary’s live performances have to be seen to be believed”, said the NME. Whereas the London Times opted for an understated “the greatest sexiest redhead since Rita Hayworth”. The Guardian describes Mary as “a jazz and blues singer whose life story gives weight to the truth that the best singers are the ones with the most painful lives.”
Closer to home, the Irish Times emphatically claimed “Ireland has never produced a singer like Mary Coughlan. Indeed anything like Mary Coughlan. A stagecraft and vocal sophistication of a veteran singing new songs and blues songs with a voice that tingles the mind with instant recognition of something very special.”
Mary has carved out a timeless and highly regarded career, with a legion of devoted fans worldwide. Her ability to connect so emotionally and empathically with both the song and her audience is testament to her inner strength, and to the power of transformation and redemption. The stage is her home. To hear Mary sing is truly to be at the core of the human heart.
Since her first album “Tired and Emotional” rocketed her to overnight fame in 1985, she has recorded 15 further solo albums, most recently the searing song cycle “Scars on the Calendar” with Erik Visser.
Throughout the 90’s, Mary was selling out some of the UK’s most prestigious venues, including the Mean Fiddler, London’s Astoria and the Liverpool Philharmonic.
She has since gone on to tour in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Scandinavia and the U.K.
Her theatrical version of the visceral 2008 album “The House of Ill Repute” was performed to great acclaim in Dublin as part of the MusicTown Festival. Mary has acted in films and has also written a moving, remarkable and candid autobiography called ‘Bloody Mary – My Story’ which is now in its third pressing.
Throughout 30 years of her quite extraordinary life and recording career Mary has drawn heavily from her legendary heroes: the grievous, teary outpourings of Billie Holiday (to whom she devoted a double album of her songs), the husky flirtations of Peggy Lee, Van Morrison’s soulful wails, the defiant chanteusery of Edith Piaf. All are present and correct in her delivery.
Even so, Mary, with her naked honesty makes every song her own; they belong to her and nobody else.
