Artist Biographies:

Joseph Chester is a multi award-nominated songwriter, composer and musician whose albums have featured in the books 101 Irish Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, by Tony Clayton-Lea, Buried Treasure by Dan Hegarty and in The Sunday Times list of the best Irish albums of all time.

In 2021 he scored a worldwide Number 1 on the Bandcamp Contemporary Classical chart with “Carolan/Cage,” an EP of guitar transcriptions of works by the Irish composer Turlough O’Carolan and the American composer John Cage.

In 2023, Bohemia Records released LUCIA, his first major composition for classical guitar & strings, commissioned by Axis Ballymun, Dublin, as part of the celebrations marking the centenary of James Joyce's Ulysses taking place in Dublin and globally on the 16th of June 2022. The suite, which was “inspired by fragments of the life of Lucia Joyce,” had its world première performance in Dublin on Bloomsday, 2022. The album received rave reviews and the suite has gone on to be performed many times (both with strings and as a solo guitar recital) including at the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, a special performance for Bloomsday 2023 at the James Joyce Tower & Museum in Sandycove, Smock Alley Theatre as well as several performances in Paris.

A completely self-taught guitarist having picked up the classical guitar for the first time in 2021, in 2024 he was privileged to be invited to perform at a public masterclass with Xuefei Yang, one of the world’s greatest living classical guitar virtuosos.

He has been nominated for the Choice Music Prize for Album of the Year, the Meteor Irish Music Awards for Best Male Artist and for Best Album in the RTE Folk Awards.

A producer of over 90 albums for other artists, including multi-platinum and Number 1 albums and singles both in Ireland and overseas, he has been lead guitarist of The Waterboys, toured extensively with Gemma Hayes, accompanied Sinead O'Connor and performed for Irish president Michael D. Higgins.

He is guitarist and producer of the group a lazarus soul.

Steve Wickham was born in Dublin.

An accomplished violinist, he was long time member of the Waterboys and in fact that’s where Steve and Joe met during their work on ‘An Appointment With Mr Yeats’ (The Waterboys’ setting of Yeats’ poems to music). Joe produced “Beekeeper” Steve’s solo album in 2017 and since then they have toured together and worked on several musical projects.

Wickham has recorded on over 100 albums and performed live with various artists including U2, Bob Dylan, REM, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith and Sinead O’ Connor and many more.

After a stint recording in the west of Ireland in the 1980s Wickham discovered his spiritual home and moved with his young family to Sligo. He lives close to the Leitrim Sculpture Centre where he regularly makes prints following several workshops with Welsh artist Pete Williams. When Covid arrived and Steve was off the road from touring he chose to return to Fine Art at YAADA in the Atlantic University Sligo.

Steve is married to the Artist Heidi Wickham.

Au Revoir Tristesse

A homage to sadness in five movements

Five bagatelles for guitar

by JOSEPH CHESTER

with five companion paintings

by STEVE WICKHAM

Inspired by the novel Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan