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music · Thursday 17 September 2026 · 7:30pm 
Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Myles O'Reilly
At Linenhall Arts Centre · Linenhall Street, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
At Linenhall Arts Centre · Linenhall Street, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
Rónán Ó Snodaigh, a founding member of the long-running band Kíla, performs alongside composer and filmmaker Myles O’Reilly at the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar on Thursday 17 September 2026. Ó Snodaigh’s vocal approach on this collaboration moves between chant, song and something closer to incantation, shaped throughout by the Irish language, while O’Reilly builds spacious, atmospheric musical environments underneath that give the words room to breathe rather than filling every gap. The venue describes the results as feeling “less like concerts and more like shared, attentive gatherings - intimate, hypnotic and emotionally direct,” and that framing fits: this is not a singalong night, it is a close-listening performance built for a quiet, attentive room. It follows the same evening as another Linenhall show elsewhere in Castlebar that week, underlining how much live traditional and experimental Irish music activity the town hosts in September. Expect a short, seated set with minimal staging - the material itself, and the interplay between voice and O’Reilly’s textures, is the whole show. Ó Snodaigh has spent over three decades with Kíla pushing Irish traditional music into unusual, genre-blurring territory, and this duo setting strips that instinct right back to just voice and atmosphere, making it one of the more distinctive bookings in the Linenhall’s autumn programme. The building has carried real historical weight since long before it became an arts venue: General Humbert held his victory celebrations here in 1798 after the Races of Castlebar, in what was then a working linen exchange built in 1790. It later served as Castlebar’s Town Hall before becoming the Linenhall Arts Centre in 1990, the endpoint of a project that began in 1976 as a small touring-exhibition initiative and moved into this building in 1986.
The Linenhall Arts Centre is on Linenhall Street in Castlebar town centre, an easy walk from the main square, with parking available nearby. Castlebar sits on the N5, roughly two and a half hours from Dublin and an hour from Galway, and is served by Bus Eireann from Dublin, Galway, Westport and Ballina.
The same night sees Gerry Guthrie play Westport Town Hall Theatre a short drive away, so if you’re building a Mayo music weekend around mid-September, this is a busy few days to plan around. There is more to see in Castlebar and across Co. Mayo.
Heading to Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar? Mayo has plenty more to see. Read the Castlebar area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.