The Réaltnach: Hilary Bow will be doing David Bowie songs as Gaeilge

FROM the MIRA Observatory, which named a lightning-bolt-shaped constellation of stars in David Bowie’s name, to a church in the Netherlands that delivered a bell-tower rendition of ‘Space Oddity’, the singer’s death, on January 10, has furnished 2016 with a glut of retrospectives, outpourings on social media, and musical tributes.

Maybe David Bowie as Gaeilge was inevitable. The Réaltnach (Starman) project sees jazz singer, Hilary Bow, collaborate with Liam Ó Maonlaoí, the Brad Pitt Light Orchestra, poet, Gabriel Rosenstock, and visual artist, Margaret Lonergan, to bring Irish-language renditions of some of Bowie’s songs to this year’s IMRAM Irish Language Literature festival.

“Some would say you can’t improve on perfection, but this isn’t about improving on any song, it’s just about having a different experience of them,” says Bow. “They flow beautifully and, when you hear them in Irish, it brings a whole new experience of the songs.”