For more than 10 years, the music festival Other Voices has taken place in a small church in Dingle, County Kerry, on the west coast of Ireland. This month the festival is relocating – first 300 miles north west to Derry, as part of the City of Culture 2013 celebrations; then across the Irish Sea to London in April.
The Derry lineup this weekend includes Beth Orton, Marina and the Diamonds, local boy Neil Hannon and Savages – and as well as reports from the festival, you'll be able watch live streams of several of the performances on guardian.co.uk/music.
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The shift from Dingle to Derry and then to London with a night at Wilton's Music Hall carries a special resonance in the year Derry is honoured as the UK's first City of Culture. "A creative enterprise like Other Voices makes concrete that there can be great depth, and there can be cultural and intellectual richness, in the relationship between these islands that goes beyond the merely political," said Dermot McLaughlin, director of Derry City of Culture.
Acts to have played in the 80-seater church of St James in Dingle include Jarvis Cocker, the National, Richard Hawley and Amy Winehouse (whose appearance is recorded in the film The Day She Came to Dingle). In December, the Unthanks, the Staves and Paul Buchanan all featured, with their performances streamed live on the Guardian website.
The main performances at the Glassworks in Derry will be streamed live into a variety of other venues in the city as well as to guardian.co.uk/music, and a further 60 acts will play across the city as part of the Other Voices Music Trail. There will also be the reappearance of the Banter Salon that made its debut in Dingle, with a number of discussions hosted by Irish Times journalist Jim Carroll. Speakers will include the Guardian's music editor Caspar Llewellyn Smith on what comes next for the music business and John Naughton, the Observer's technology columnist and Open University professor of the public understanding of technology, on technology and identity.
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Neil Hannon said "As an alumni of Other Voices Dingle, it was lovely to receive an invite to appear at Other Voices Derry. Not least because Derry/Londonderry (the city that dare not speak its name) is the city of my birth! It is also the UK City of Culture this year, which I am keen to show my support for."
"We're branching out but the ethos of Other Voices stays the same: an intimate venue and a small audience, new and established musicians sharing the stage and, through new technology, the chance to stream the event live into other venues," said Philip King, prime mover behind the festival. "The spirit of what we have achieved will underpin all we do in the future."
The lineup for Derry
Friday 8 February from 8pm
Saturday 9 February from 8pm
Bronagh Gallagher
Sunday 10 February from 8pm
UPDATE: 9 February 2013
Two Door Cinema Club have cancelled their appearance at Other Voices on Sunday night due to illness. More details here
Derry's City of Culture celebrations began in January with the BBC Sons and Daughters concert.
