***A Fleadh Fringe event at The Commons, Ballynafeigh Church — Saturday 8th August, 4.10pm–9.10pm***

There is something quietly radical about marking time. In a city that moves fast, where culture is consumed in clips and evenings are parcelled into slots, the idea of spending five hours in a church listening to the light change feels almost subversive.

That is exactly what Lughnasadh Circles invites you to do.

What is Lughnasadh?

Lughnasadh (pronounced Loo-nah-sah) is one of the four great seasonal festivals of the ancient Irish calendar — the midpoint between summer solstice and autumn equinox, a time of harvest, gathering, and transition. Long before it became the backdrop to folk festivals and fire ceremonies, it was the moment communities came together to mark what the land was doing and what that meant for the people living on it.

Lughnasadh Circles takes that impulse — communal, ritual, rooted in place — and brings it into the present.

The Event

From 4.10pm on Saturday 8th August, Belfast composer and sound artist Rory Friers will set in motion a five-hour ambient composition inside The Commons at Ballynafiegh Church on the Ormeau Road. The piece will unfold slowly — not as a concert to attend, but as a space to inhabit.

The composition begins as the afternoon light softens and builds gradually toward a shared crescendo timed to coincide with sunset at 9.09pm. Throughout those five hours, a curated series of sessions will weave through the sound — musicians, lyricists, vocalists, and improvisers joining the piece at intervals, each bringing something distinct, together forming something larger.

This is not a show with a running order and reserved seats. Come for an hour or stay for the full arc of the evening. Drift in and out. Listen closely or let the sound wash over you. At the end, as the light finally fades and the composition swells to meet it, everyone present is invited to gather in the circle — to mark this moment together.

The Composer: Rory Friers

Rory Friers is one of Belfast's most quietly extraordinary artists. Known internationally as a founding member and guitarist of And So I Watch You From Afar, his solo practice spans film scoring, immersive installation, and large-scale site-specific work.

Previous projects include In Search of a Clearing, created with the Ulster Orchestra and presented at Belfast's Waterfront Hall; All Together; All Alone, an immersive installation commissioned for W5's AMAZE space; and When the Westlink Goes, created for Belfast 2024. His work is defined by its ambition and its warmth — music that transforms spaces into instruments, and invites listeners to hear the familiar as if for the first time.

For Lughnasadh Circles, Rory brings that same sensibility to a five-hour piece designed to breathe with the building, the light, and the people inside it.

The Performers

Joining Rory's composition across the evening are eleven artists whose practices span an extraordinary range.

Colin Hassard is a poet from Banbridge, two-time Ulster Poetry Slam Champion and author of debut collection Age of the Microwave Dinner (Doire Press, 2021). Áine Gordon released her debut EP The Stray in May 2025 — a quietly arresting collection of folk-inflected songs produced by Joshua Burnside, already earning her appearances at the Ulster Hall, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, and Sound of Belfast. Victor Henriquez (Vicondre) is a Chilean musician living in Northern Ireland, specialising in charango and ukulele; he also performs as one half of the Flamenco-Latin duo Los Dramaticos.

Aoibh Johnson is a playwright and theatre-maker from County Tyrone whose production The Daughters of Róisín toured for seven years to sell-out audiences in Dublin, Belfast, London, Australia and the Edinburgh Fringe. Marty Byrne is a Belfast-based vocalist and sound artist whose PhD research at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) explores experimental vocal performance, queer theory, and generative AI. David Esse is a Belfast improviser whose practice centres on the voice as pure sound — breath, sustained tones, fragmented phonetics — developed through the QUBe improvisation collective.

Damian Mills is a post-doctoral researcher, music improviser and orchestrator whose work adapts immersive technology for accessible community music and pioneering performance arts. Dr Miguel Ortiz is a Mexican composer, sound artist, and Lecturer in Design and Prototyping at Queen's University Belfast, whose work sits at the intersection of digital instrument design, composition, and improvisation. Abhiram Bhanuprakash is a PhD researcher at SARC with over 15 years of Carnatic vocal training, whose research explores virtual-acoustic instrument design. Rich Dale (Myco Ryza) is a songwriter, bassist, and collaborator currently on duty for Hidden Torches.

And performing as Eric Needs To Know is Belfast-based artist and creative producer Gawain Morrison — whose electronic practice, rooted in techno, abstract and downtempo electronica, has always emerged from and fed back into land-based ritual, seasonal cycles, and installation work. His 2021 album The Ogham Grove was made to accompany a monumental installation for Belfast's Culture Night — making Lughnasadh Circles a natural continuation of that thread.

The Venue: The Commons, Ballynafeigh Church

The Commons at Ballynafiegh Church is not a conventional venue. A disused place of worship on the Ormeau Road, it has been reimagined as a living space for the city — for community, contemplation, and culture. There is something fitting about hosting a pagan seasonal ritual beneath those arched ceilings. The building has held its share of ceremony. This evening adds another kind.

About Brink

Lughnasadh Circles is produced by Brink — a platform for discussion, education, and action centred on climate breakdown. Brink works at the intersection of art, technology, and citizen science, bringing creative thinkers together to imagine more connected, sustainable, and resilient ways of living.

This event is part of that mission: a space where ancient knowledge and contemporary practice meet, where community and culture are not separate from our relationship with the living world, but expressions of it. Marking the seasonal turn is not nostalgia. It is a form of attention — and attention, right now, matters.

Join us

Saturday 8th August. 4.10pm. The Commons, Ballynafiegh Church, Ormeau Road, Belfast.

Tickets can be purchased here. Come as you are. Come for an hour or stay for all five. At the end, gather in the circle.

Ancient and modern. Quiet and alive.

Lughnasadh Circles is a Fleadh Fringe event, produced by Brink.www.playthinkbrink.com

Thank you to Belfast City Council and The Duncairn for supporting this event.

#TheDuncairn | #FleadhCheoil2026 | #FleadhBelfast2026 | #PlayThinkBrink

Lughnasadh Circles: Ancient Ritual, Living Sound