Luka Bloom: performing with The Long Notes
Celtic Connections Schools Concerts
- Celebration of Burns
- Wed 25 January, 11:00am
- *Free for Schools & Home Educators
- Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Main Auditorium
A celebration of the life of Scotland's most famous son, this year's Robert Burns Concert will be aimed at our younger audience members and features the Celine Donoghue Band. Celine was a member of Scottish folk band Calasaig, playing tenor banjo and fiddle. She was a finalist in the inaugural Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year competition and won the All Britain Fleadh for tenor-banjo in 2001. She has performed many high profile gigs, including the inaugural Burns Memorial Lecture given by Kofi Annan at the United Nations, New York in 2004.
Suggested stages: Nursery - P3
If you are a teacher from a school outside Glasgow, a home educator or have not received the booking information, you can request it from: schoolinfo@glasgowconcerthalls.com
Danny Kyle's Open Stage
- Wed 25 January, 5:00pm
- Free
- Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Exhibition Hall
Hosted by Danny Kyle's good friend Liz Clark, the Open Stage is a chance to see new musical talent as they try to win a coveted support slot at next year's festival - and all absolutely free!
Woody at 100
- Wed 25 January, 7:30pm
- £23 (premium seats - limited availability), £20, £18
- Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Main Auditorium
July 14th 2012 marks 100 years since the birth of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, indisputably the most important US folk artist of the 20th century. Celtic Connections inaugurates his centenary year with a dynamic live embodiment of his vast and continuing legacy, as Jay Farrar (Son Volt), Anders Parker (Gob Iron) and Will Johnson (Monsters of Folk) perform newly-wrought settings for some of the thousand-odd completed song lyrics, minus tunes, that Guthrie left behind.
Guthrie himself mostly wrote words to existing folk melodies, matching a keen observational eye with first-hand empathy for the human struggles he witnessed across Depression-era America, creating in his songs a living yet timeless archive of ordinary folks' experience, and a powerfully eloquent vehicle of protest and resistance. Also on the bill is his granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie, with duet partner Johnny Irion, as we celebrate a truly iconic figure whose influence remains as potent and vital as ever.
SligoLive Sessions with Máirtín O'Connor & Seamie O'Dowd, The Gorgeous Colours and The JPTrio
- Wed 25 January, 7:30pm
- £13
- St Andrew's in the Square
Marking the second year of Celtic Connections' partnership with the Sligo Live festival, another triple bill curated from Ireland's traditional heartland - and one of its most exciting contemporary hotbeds - reunites the fabled partnership of pioneering accordionist Máirtín O'Connor with guitarist, singer and fiddler Seamie O'Dowd, as heard on O'Connor's 2005 album The Road West.
Aptly-named indie-popsters The Gorgeous Colours channel blues, folk, jazz, soul, rock, indie and electronic influences into "a perfect package of feel good, danceable and all-round gorgeous sounds" (State.ie), while O'Connor himself has hailed young Sligo natives and Danny Kyle Award winners The JPTrio as "the new cutting edge of fused traditional music".
Alternative Burns Night with Babelfish and special guests
- Wed 25 January, 7:30pm
- £14
- Oran Mor
Another of the marvellously maverick line-ups spawned amid the late-night primal soup of Celtic Connections' Festival Club, Babelfish – who released their brilliantly kaleidoscopic debut album, International Disgrace, in 2011 – now evolve onto the main festival bill, as hosts of a Burns Night with lots of differences.
Featuring fiddler Adam Sutherland, pianist Andy Thorburn, accordionist John Somerville, drummer Iain Copeland and rapper/poet/polemicist Jock Urquhart plus special guests, the entertainment combines radical new renditions of Burns material with 21st century responses to it, in the true mercurial spirit of the bard.
Luka Bloom and The Long Notes
- Wed 25 January, 7:30pm
- £15
- O2 ABC Glasgow 1
Many would vie for the honour, but few better merit the role of personal musician to the Dalai Lama, on his Australian tour last June, as Irish world troubadour Luka Bloom, who opened each of His Holiness's "public conversation" events with As I Waved Goodbye, a song he wrote in tribute some years ago. A longtime Glasgow favourite, Bloom (aka Barry Moore, Christy's wee brother) delighted fans once again with 2010's Dreams in America, a newly-recorded, solo-acoustic sampler from his 25-year back catalogue.
Dazzling London-based quartet The Long Notes, comprising Jamie Smith(fiddle), Colette O'Leary(accordion), Brian Kelly(banjo/mandolin) and Alex Percy(guitar/vocals) recently released their superb second album, In the Shadow of Stromboli.
Justin Currie and Naomi Bedford
- Wed 25 January, 7:30pm
- £14
- Mitchell Library
In MOJO's words, "Saying Justin Currie knows how to craft a song is a bit like saying Caravaggio could paint." The ex-Del Amitri front man's signature synthesis of irresistible melodies, surgically barbed lyrics and superb vocals continues to bear rich fruit in his solo career.
He'll also be guesting with late-blooming English songstress Naomi Bedford, debuting their collaboration on her ecstatically-received new album, Tales from the Weeping Willow.
Louis Abbott and Special Guests
- Wed 25 January, 7:30pm
- £5
- Brel
Two evenings curated by Admiral Fallow's Louis Abbott, fresh from a string of festival appearances including Glastonbury and South by Southwest in Texas.
Cecil Sharp Project
- Wed 25 January, 8:00pm
- £13
- Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Strathclyde Suite
Originally commissioned by the Shrewsbury Folk Festival, the Cecil Sharp Project brought together eight leading British and North American folk artists for a week's collaborative residency in March 2011, inspired by the work of seminal folksong collector Cecil Sharp, particularly his Appalachian expeditions of 1915-18. Show of Hands' Steve Knightley, English sibling singers Jim Moray and Jackie Oates, accordionist Andy Cutting, ex-Breabach fiddler/vocalist Patsy Reid, Southern US roots specialist Caroline Herring and Canadian claw hammer banjo ace Leonard Podolak, of The Duhks, tonight perform the resulting set of newly-written and traditional material, exploring the life and legacy of this pivotal but enigmatic figure.
The Deadly Duos
- Finlay MacDonald & Chris Stout and Stewart Hardie & Frank McLaughlin
- Wed 25 January, 8:00pm
- £11
- The National Piping Centre
A one-on-one between piper Finlay MacDonald and Shetland fiddle supremo Chris Stout is a delectably formidable prospect, given the electricity they've previously generated in MacDonald's band, and their shared appetite for musical adventure. Northumbrian fiddler Stewart Hardy's eclectic tastes take in folk, pop, rock, country, jazz and western swing, meeting their perfect match in Scottish guitarist and piper Frank McLaughlin.
The Captain's Collection
- Wed 25 January, 8:00pm
- £13
- Tron Theatre
Written by Hamish MacDonald and directed by Alison Peebles
Originally the brainchild of Blazin' Fiddles' Bruce MacGregor, Dogstar Theatre Company's award-winning music theatre production vibrantly dramatises the life and work of Captain Simon Fraser - fiddler, composer, publisher, dispossessed laird and Empire soldier - whose 1816 collection The Airs and Melodies Peculiar to the Highlands of Scotland and the Isles, preserved a wealth of ancient Gaelic songs and tunes for posterity. The cast comprises Matthew Zajac(winner of Best Actor at the 2009 Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland) and Gaelic singer/actress Alyth McCormack, with live music from Jonny Hardie and Ingrid Henderson.
Gaelic Song Circlewith Gillebride MacIllemhaoil, Norrie MacIver and Alasdair Whyte
- Wed 25 January, 8:00pm
- £10
- The Glasgow Art Club
A triumvirate of Gaeldom's younger male champions from around the Hebrides, including South Uist's Gillebrìde MacIllemhaoil- "a voice that wine writers would love to set their vocabularies loose on" (Herald) - and fellow Mod Gold Medallist (at 19!) Alasdair Whyte, from Mull. Leòdhasach Norrie MacIver, of Bodega and Mànran, completes the circle.
Celtic Connections Late Night Sessions
- Wed 25 January, 10:00pm
- £6
- Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Exhibition Hall
For a more intimate evening during the festival, enjoy our Late Night Sessions taking place in the Exhibition Hall at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall hosted by Findlay Napier. Featuring just as many great musicians as the main Festival Club, the bar will be open late and you can be assured of many a memorable moment.
You'll also be assured of a warm welcome at the House of Song hosted by Doris Rougviein a peaceful oasis away from the main stage.
