SOUL SURMISE

STEVE STOCKMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH ANTHONY TONER AND ANDREA MONTGOMERY - 4CF 25

Over the past ten years, it might have become the highlight of my year. For one evening, usually the Friday of the 4 Corners Festival, I get to sit down and be In Conversation with a singer that I love.

It all began with Iain Archer, who’ll actually be playing his 30th Anniversary Lyric Theatre gig at this year’s festival.

One of my favourite bands since 1987 has been Deacon Blue so to have Ricky Ross at my mercy was an utter thrill. As Ricky sang a song, I sat to the side choosing the next and asking him about them all plus Deacon Blue, faith and Africa and Scottish Independence.

Brian Houston was a hoot. Brian and I have known each other for decades and have a rapport that came alive in interview with banter and intimate honesty sitting side by side. Brian was talking and singing the Irish language which added to the evening.

Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody and I met almost as we sat down but Gary’s grace and welcome to my probing was the mark of the man. We spoke about his granny, his dad, school, Ireland and grace.  

By now others were suggesting who they wanted me to interview and someone mentioned Ruth McGinley. I am so glad they did. Ruth was so open about mental health issues and the difficult journey that classical music has taken her and when she played… oh my it was of highest quality.

Duke Special was done in Lockdown. The Accidental Theatre did an amazing job of making us feel that we were in an actual theatre and again his Dukeness was willing to delve deeper into the songs and his art. 

Dana Masters had blown our heads with an unaccompanied rendering of A Change Is Gonna Come in St Peter’s Cathedral to end our 10th Anniversary Festival. We booked her immediately afterwards to be the In Conversation for 2023. What a night. Her eloquence on her upbringing in the racist Southern States of America, through to making Northern Ireland her home and her dram for the place, as well as her songs with Cian Boyland being breathtaking.

And last year was Trú with their Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies to those trad Irish tunes. Chest thumping and heart warming.

So to this year. With the theme of HOME? I was immediately drawn to Anthony Toner. Anthony has been writing about our wee place over 15 records. There are songs about the home he grew up in, with Elvis on the bedroom wall, to songs about Harpur’s Hill the estate that that house was on, to songs about Coleraine where that estate was in. 

After that we are across Northern Ireland and the world. Belfast features heavily from his biggest radio hit Sailortown to One For The Black Box and then outta town with The Road To Fivemiletown. The entire Six Inches Of Water album is based on East Belfast stories. 

There will be so much to chat about. Anthony is a natural raconteur and of course there will be songs.

As I was about to invite Anthony it suddenly struck me that we rarely get a public opportunity to chat to his partner Andrea Montgomery. Andrea is a writer and producer and also a witty cartoonist. She is also the founder and Artistic Director of Terra Nova Productions, Northern Ireland's professional intercultural theatre company.

That is enough to be getting on with BUT in a year when our theme is HOME? I will get to chat to Andrea about being a Canadian who was born in Delhi, whose father’s job had her shifting “home” every seven years or so. What does she make of home? How does she make a home? Is that now Belfast or…

The In Conversation event started because we didn’t want people coming to a free concert when our interviewee was playing a ticketed event around the same time. If you want a Toner gig there are two in May in St. Georges. 

This will be another special one off night. I am as excited as ever.

 

4 Corners Festival Tickets are all FREE and you can BOOK HERE

4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025 - TICKETS ARE LIVE

TICKETS ARE LIVE!

We are very excited about our 2025 4 Corners Festival - HOME? This is our 13th Festival and perhaps our strongest and most eclectic programme yet.

Unapologetically Belfast centric this year’s programme asks us all about HOME? The question mark is important. What is home? Where do we find it? How do we care for it? Who do we welcome in? 

As always there is a wide array of events. There will be music, including Iain Archer; theatre including Nuala McKeaver and literature, including Glenn Patterson. 

I always getting excited about my evening In Conversation and this year I am beyond myself to get Anthony Toner in a chair and talk about so many of his songs of home in Harpur's Hill, Coleraine and east Belfast. Even better I am adding to the bill, my first ever double interview, Anthony’s partner Andrea Montgomery, writer and theatre producer who, as a Canadian in Belfast, might have lost to say about home.

There will be a photographic exhibition on the common home of our environment. Another artistic event hopes to capture the walk by public. From Glasgow we welcome The Peace Loom where the entire city, as it walks past 2A Royal Avenue, can walk in off the street and do a wee bit of French knitting on a huge loom. You know you want to.

We will be reaching children and young people in our annual events. Play It Be Ear are already at work with Primary Schools to produce a play and Peace Players will help young teens play soccer, rugby and Gaelic all on the one evening. Ivor Novello winning songwriter Iain Archer will be doing a songwriting morning with 6th Formers.

This year’s keynote speakers include Lorna Gold who has written Climate Generation: Awakening to Our Children's Future and was a key player in the film we showed at the 2023 festival The Letter when Pope Francis invited people whose homes were under environmental threat to tell their stories. 

We have talked about having Siobhan Garrigan Professor at Trinity College, Dublin to speak at the Festival for years and when we heard her new book was to be called A Theology of Home in a Time of Homelessness it seemed utterly perfect for this year’s theme. 

Presbyterian minister in Minneapolis USA, Neil Craigan has been coming back to his native Belfast for the festival for years and we are delighted that he has agreed to close this years Festival, summing up the theme of the week and sending us away from the Festival with challenge and inspiration, with the help of Dana and Andrew Masters. 

This year’s Panel discussion event will see an array of voices - Monica McWilliams, David Adams, Nicola Brady and Spike Murray under the control of journalist Will Leitch - talk about opportunities and missed opportunities for reconciliation in our Belfast home.

There is so much more. Too much to mention though I need to say that Fr Martin Magill’s spending on Belfast Street names helped out by the amazing songwriter Brian Houston will be a fascinating night of learning what we take for granted every day.

And the very popular Wander… the radio service… a clean up… a networking event… a Round The Table… a seminar on public transport and more… 

 

BOOK NOW - HERE 

and if you book and find you can no longer go, please tel us and we will find the seats other posteriors...

4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2025 - MUSIC, LITERATURE & THEATRE

How excited am I that we have launched the 4 Corners Festival 2025 and that I can now tell the world what will be happening for a jam packed week in February. Our theme is HOME?. Set the week aside - January 31st through February 9th and grab tickets quickly (info below).

This blog is just just about the music and theatre and literature. There is so much more.

Iain Archer, Nuala McKeever, Glenn Patterson, Anthony Toner and Andrea Montgomery all on the same bill. Oh my! 

Nuala’s play Truth, Love Or Promise is a one woman play that is worth seeing for the first, second or third time. It’s full of humour, grief and our Troubles. The turns and twists of home.

Glenn has been writing novels for decades most of which has opened up his home, the city of Belfast. I am a particular fan of The Mill Grinding The Old People Young about the development of the city and Gull about that DeLorean car factory that I passed every Friday heading home on the train from University.

Iain is maybe one of Northern Ireland’s best ever songwriters. Though not as famous as Van or Gary. Iain has won two Ivor Novello Awards for Snow Patrol’s Final Straw and James Bay’s Hold Back The River. The latter even had a Grammy nomination. He has also written with Liam Gallagher, Shania Twain, Jake Bugg and Noah Kahan among others. 30 years ago as young man starting his journey he sold out The Lyric Theatre… and so this year we welcome him home to the very same theatre.

This year’s In Conversation event that has featured Deacon Blue’s Ricky Ross, Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody and very memorably Dana Masters, will give me an opportunity time to talk to Anthony Toner and Andrea Montgomery about home.

Anthony is one of our wee country’s most crafted songwriters. He has written about his own home with Elvis on the bedroom wall, the Harpur’s Hill estate that that house was in and the Coleraine that that the estate was in. Widening his home to East Belfast he has an entire album about that side of our city called Six Inches Of Water. 

We are delighted to have alongside Anthony his partner Andrea Montgomery. Andrea is a writer, theatre director and even cartoonist. She is Canadian but was been born in India, raised in Switzerland & Indonesia and has worked in China, Greenland and Iran so talking to her about home will be fascinating. I cannot wait!

These are just some of the names. Scattered across other events you’ll find guest appearances by Brian Houston, Dana Masters and Clare Sands among others. 

The 4 Corners Festival 2025 written programme is out there. On Monday December 2nd it will go live on our website https://www.4cornersfestival.com. Everything is FREE. Thank you to our funders and Friends Of The Festival. 

FR MARTIN MAGILL & STEVE STOCKMAN - Belfast Telegraph's Take 5

photo: Bernie Brown

 

The double act that is Fr. Martin Magill and I were asked by The Belfast Telegraph to contribute to their TAKE 5 series. It was published on November 23rd. Here are our answers. 

 

FAVOURITE BOOK?

STEVE: Everyone should read this year’s Booker Prize winning Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. I also love Colum McCann and Claire Keegan… but my all time favourite is The Atlas Of Forgotten Places by Canadian Jenny D Williams, set in Uganda, where I read it on sabbatical in 2018. I felt that book and felt that it felt me.

MARTIN: It would have to be Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Greg Boyle, the inspirational founder of Homeboys the largest gang rehabilitation and re-entry programme in the world though Guard Your Heart by local writer Sue Divin is in there too with Into the Silent Land: The Practice of Contemplation being my favourite spiritual book after the Bible of course. 

 

FAVOURITE SONG? 

STEVE: Too many but if push came to shove it has to be A Case of You by Joni Mitchell (Canadian again!). An vulnerable love song with a wee spiritual verse thrown in.  

MARTIN: I love Time to Go Inward by Rodney Crowell with the powerful lyrics including “It's time to go inward, time to be still If I don't do it now I don't believe I ever will”.  

 

FAVOURITE FILM? 

STEVE: Shawshank Redemption is the serious one and Bruce Almighty the comedy. They are the two that I have used most for sermon illustrations. 

MARTIN: I suppose not just for this time of the year but for anytime of the year, it has to be It’s a Wonderful Life with lots of tissues beside me. 

 

FAVOURITE PLACE? 

STEVE: Oh I love Cape Town, Vancouver, Arua in Uganda but if we have been in love with Ballycastle for 28 years and go up there anytime we can.

MARTIN: I have a particular fondness for the Lake District having spent several holidays there; closer to home, McArt’s Fort on the Cavehill Hill on a good day looking over Belfast is really hard to beat. 

 

FAVOURITE MEAL? 

STEVE: I do love the sea food Boxty in Holohan’s Pantry but if I am treating myself in another restaurant it would have to be Steak and champ. 

MARTIN: My real favourite would have to be a really good floury potato, lots of butter and a glass of milk but if going out somewhere it’s likely to be something Italian having spent four years in Rome. 

BECOME A FRIEND OF THE 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL

4 Corners Festival has given me some of the highlights of my life. In Conversation with Ricky Ross and Gary Lightbody to name just two of so many great interviews I've been privileged to do.

When we look back over twelve 4 Corners Festivals we are thrilled with who and what we have brought to Belfast - Pope Francis, Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Longley, Colin Davidson, Gary Lightbody, Carl Frampton, Jan Carson, Dana Masters, Ferna, Declan Lawn and and Adam Patterson from Blue Lights… and so many and so much more.

We are also delighted that through very generous funding and through Friends of the Festival we can offer these events for FREE. 

Yet it is not FREE. The Festival costs somewhere in the region of £60,000. 

We are so blessed by those who fund the Festival. The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the Northern Ireland Executive Office, Belfast City Council, The Belfast Linen Quarter Improvement District and Black Santa all give to us funds so that we can put the programme together and pay for our staff.

We would like to thank those who donate during the Festival. I always suggest giving what a punter feels the value of an evening is. If they were paying for the same event in the Mac or the Black Box or the Ulster Hall, what would they have paid…

Maybe even now, 8 months on from this year’s Festival you haven’t had a chance to give - HERE

The most important people, are our Friends Of The Festival. This is a group of people who give to us on a monthly basis which helps sustain our costs throughout the year. In many ways your regular donations encourage us psychologically through the year as well as financially. Again if you want to be a Friend of The Festival -  .

One of the advantages of becoming a friend is that you are among the first to hear about what is going to happen in 2025. Our launch event in December  is very much with Friends of the festival in mind. Come and listen to some music, hear some shorts snippets and have unveiled around you the 2025 programme.

It is not too late to be there. Become a Friend of the Festival - HERE

Thank you all so much for all your support. We long to give the Festival a sustainable future. If we should lose one funder it would be difficult to continue to do what we do so we thank all of you for what you give to us.

The 2025 Festival is almost ready to be signed off. It is full of talks, music, theatre and literature. We are getting excited!

US ON THE INSPIRED TO ACT PODCAST

Inspired To Act is a wonderful podcast hosted by Will Leitch and Diane Holt. In the most beguiling and light hearted way Will and Diane draw out intelligent thought, theology and praxis from their guests.

It was a pleasure to spend some time talking to them about 4 Corners Festivals. So here, give a listen to myself, Fr Martin Magill and Mylie Brennan talking about the history, raison d'être and highlights of this year's festival. It is really very good!

LISTEN HERE

POST FESTIVAL BLUES - THE DAY AFTER...

The day after the 4 Corners Festival 2024.

There is the almighty relief. It is over. We made it through the exhaustion. Eight days of - When do we need to eat? What time do we need to be there? Where can we park near the venue? Who is hosting tonight? Is this hoodie smelling yet?!

It is finished. In the can.

So the day after is a crash. Adrenalin tap switches off. Sleep. Sleep a lot. An empty evening. Just Janice and I in our favourite restaurant with all the time in the world. Bliss.

BUT… we miss each other. The committee. The Board. Megan, our amazing admin. The hoodie crew. The stewards. The sound crew. The streaming crew. The press team. The guests. 

AND… we are looking back. How did it go? All of it as one big sum. Each individual part. What were the highlights? What were the depth charges. What do we need to watch again? Whose script do we need to read? There will be blogs. David Campton’s first is up already.

It was very good. It went well. Was it great? Was it not just a good festival but a festival that was good for something. Good for our city. Good for Jesus’s peacemaking mission that we are called to. Good for every individual who came? Was God in it. Every bit of it. The bits that lazy theologians might call secular as well as the obviously sacred.

There are also lessons. Sometimes things we have learned but didn’t learn. The same wee tiny mistakes in the running of events. We will note them again hoping we really learn this time. 

There is a Post Festival Blues. The more you give, the more you’ll feel it. It’s a mix of exhaustion, loss of camaraderie and the feeling of belonging, the now lack of amazing events. It takes time to wring out those blues.

AND THEN… very soon… we will gather again. Oh we will reflect back, gaze across the pie charts that the online surveys (FILL ONE IN!!!!) help us with. We will look at weaknesses. Strengths. Audiences ages, locations, opinions. 

BUT… very soon… we will begin again. The fourth Friday in every month the planning group will come together, enjoy each other’s company and laugh a lot. 

We will throw the seeds of ideas into a fertile fields of dreams and watch as together, with the imagination that God gives us through one another, and watch for a harvest that is always a surprise beyond our abilities and wildest dreams - 4 Corners Festival 2025. #13.

I always ask, how do we top that and God always whispers, “Watch me!”

I love this Festival. Thank you Lord. 

CLARE HAYNS AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL - WOMEN IN THE BIBLE

Rev. Clare Hayns book Unveiled about women who have somehow got lost in the depths of the Old Testament caught my attention immediately. What an idea? How necessary to hear? 

I have watched Clare on line and among the many women that Clare has made me sit up and take notice of are Abishag The Shummunite, who she reckons has the funniest name and whose job it was to lie beside King David in his aging years to keep him warm at night! 

Also Huldah who when sacred text was discovered in the Temple, she was asked to exegete it. Wow, the role of women is never easily pinned down.

So, Clare is quite the authority on female characters. There are 40 in the book. She describes them well. Unveiled is an insightful book, both about women and also about lessons we can learn from them.

To top it all off, Clare’s book becomes a work of art in itself as her son Micah unveils the women in illustrations that are captivating and brilliant.

Clare and indeed Micah are with us for our opening event of 4 Corners Festival 2024. Clare will be our keynote speaker and Micah will teach a little sketching with chalk at Unveiled - Stories in Scripture which is at Fitzroy at 7pm on Sunday February 4th. They will also be speaking at our University Students lunch - Unveiling Stories Together on Monday 5th at 12.30 in the Hub, Elmwood Avenue.

This year’s Festival theme is stories and the stories of Scripture are dear to us. Indeed, many of us of other faiths and none will have been brought up in these stories. 

We are seeking stories that will bring hope and thought of no better way to set out for the week of the festival than Clare unpacking a few of these stories of women of faith who brought hope into the challenges of life, political and personal. Clare will have you mesmerised by who you have missed and how they can inspire you.

Way back in the early 90s a young woman arrived in Dublin to work for a year as an intern in Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church. She was gifted, able and feisty. I was the Youth Development Officer and Clare Benyon, as she was then, was a lot of fun to work alongside.

Initially Greenbelt and then social media have kept us in touch. Clare married magician John and had a family, got ordained into the Anglican Church and has been working as a University Chaplain at Christchurch Oxford. She is about to move on.

How thrilled am I that she will be with us in Fitzroy on Sunday night! Join us...

BOOK HERE NOW

INTRODUCING DOUG GAY - 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2024

He strode out across a muddy Greenbelt field. Janice’s friend new him from old youth fellowship days and went over and chatted. He was Doug Gay and he was the singer in Candy Says. He was so cool.

No less cool when he played MainStage a couple of years later in the new Calvin’s Dream, the dark shades, the wind blowing back his hair. Did I say cool.

Calvin’s Dream were on the Sticky Music record label and I got to know those guys and therefore Doug again. There was lots going on under the cool. He seemed a sharp fella, theologically astute.

In 1992 he arrived at a festival we were organising in County Wicklow. Arklight. Over the next few years I got to know Doug as a very fine human being, even more theologically astute than I thought and a fine communicator. 

I loved every seminar he led at Greenbelt even when the subject didn’t seem to be my thing. There was always a thought or line to take away and process.

That is all 20 years ago, some of it 30, and every chance I have gotten I try to spend some time with Doug. Janice and I value his counsel and how he widens our reading and thoughts and the way he nurtures us.

He’s a Church of Scotland minister, he is a Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at Glasgow University. He has made two albums in recent years, both reviewed on this blog, and authored various books on theology and culture. 

I am delighted to say that Doug is speaking at the 4 Corners Festival this year. How did it take so long!? 

As well as the Radio Ulster morning service (11th), he will be our key note speaker on February 11th@7pm in the wonderful renovation that is St. Comgall’s on Davis Street, Doug will speak under the title Towards a Culture of Hope. I have heard Doug in private and publicly speak of hope and imagination for decades and he is the man for such a night as this. 

Come on over. As well as Doug there will be songs from Eilidh Patterson, an exhibition about the story of Presbyterianism In West Belfast and I am sure a short look back at the entire festival before Doug inspires us out into the rest of the year.

 

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MUSIC AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2024

TRÚ

Trú add their almost Crosby, Stills & Nash harmonies as their very own fresh tributary to the traditional river of trad. New songs, old songs in Irish as well as English take us back through Irish stories from ancient to recent times. 

The In Conversation series across 4 Corners Festivals have been exciting evenings of insights of life as well as art and lots of humour and the unexpected thrown in. 

For Trú Steve Stockman will talk to the band about their own story, of finding each other and their muse and then Miley Brennan will seek to find out more about their work and the Irish stories that fill the songs from their two albums to date - No Fixed Abode and Eternity Near.

Performing at: An Evening In Conversation With Trú; February [email protected] In Orangefield Presbyterian Church

FREE - BOOK HERE

 

BEKI HEMINGWAY (& RANDY KERKMAN)

American husband and wife duo, Beki and Randy, have played more Festivals than most. Their Forgiveness Waltz was once vital to our closing nights. With Beki's rock voice and Randy's guitar skills they sing songs of holding to faith through tough times and how to recognise and celebrate the good times. After one 4 Corners Festival, Board member David Campton suggested that if there was such a thing as "good ear worm" then it applied to Beki and Randy. So good, they are performing twice!

Performing at: Unveiled - Stories In Scripture; February 4th@7pm in Fitzroy, 77 University Street

FREE - BOOK HERE

ALSO Performing at: Discovering Jesus In the Other; Challenging The Myth Of Otherness; February [email protected] in Agape Centre, 256-66 Lisburn Road

 

EILIDH PATTERSON

Somehow, this is Eilidh's debut at 4 Corners festival. It is hard to understand why when you hear her pure voice, accurate guitar technique and accessible songs that are filled with the spiritual. She has profitably used her songwriting to deal with her own personal anxieties and that story might come out as she sings on our closing night.

Performing at: Towards A Future Of Hope; February 11th@7pm in St Comgall's, Davis Street

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THE FITZROY COLLECTIVE

For almost 15 years a collective of singers and players from Fitzroy have been performing The Gospel According To... series. They have covered U2, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and many more... including Christy Moore at our very first Festival. They have recently done Sinead O'Connor and will perform a few of those songs at the evening with Elma Walsh.

Performing at: DONAL WALSH: A STORY OF HOPE on February [email protected] at. Forthspring Community Centre, 373-375 Springfield Rd

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Worship at the RTE TV service and the BBC Radio Ulster radio Service will be led by a 4 Corners Festival Collective. We need a little congregation for the Radio Ulster one on February [email protected] at 120 Cliftonville Road

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