FOLK & WORLD MUSIC
I Opening the show, first in a great cast of international performers at this year’s
Glasgow Folk Festival is Spain’s lauded, unpredictable, spirited and wholly
absorbing flamenco ensemble Jaleo.
Folk Festival
I Tonight at Noon Festival Club. Victorian Bar. Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. 552 4267. 9pm. Free. The Livingstone Brothers with their multi-instrumental electrofolk. drum-machine assisted ambiencc. Glasgow Folk Festival
I late flight Ceilidh Dance Exhibition Hall. Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. 1 Sauchiehall Street. Ticketlink 227 5511. 10.30pm. £5. Cloud Howe Ceilidh Band. Glasgow Folk Festival I Weekly Ceilidh Dance The Ferry. Clyde Place. 9pm. £6 (£4). Tickets at the venue or in advance from the Ticket Centre. Candleriggs. 227 5511.
I Ceilidh Dance Riverside. Fox Street. offCIyde Street. 248 3144. £5. Doors open 8pm.
Edinburgh
I Finnegan’s Awake Scruffy Murphy's. George IV Bridge. 225 1681.
SATURDAY 24 5
Glasgow
I Music Village Tramway. 25 Albert Drive. 227 5511. Noon—5pm. The 13th annual touring Music Village this year creates a colourful two-day market celebrating the complexity of Pakistan. with stalls. refreshment. food. crafts. clothes and stage performances from all the visiting singers. musicians and artists. including nomad Pathans. Sufi fakirs. desert musicians from Balochistan and Sind. female Ghazai singers from Karachi. and Punjabi bagpipers and drummers with dummy camels and horses!
I Music Village Concert Tramway. 25 Albert Drive. 227 5511. 7.30pm. With Faquira Bam. Bashir Lohar and Sachu Khan.
I William Jackson (7.30pm): Old Blind 0on (10pm) Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. 552 4267. Ticketlink 227 5511. Each concert £7 (£5). fix-Ossian composer. harper and instrumentalist brings his own group. See Music preview. Later. Old Blind Dogs journey down from Aberdeen with their up-beat Scottish music soaked in North American blues. bluegrass and cajun. and South American percussion. Glasgow Folk Festival.
I Steven Marshall Festival Club. Victorian Bar. Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. 552 4267. 9pm. Free. Glasgow Folk
Festival
3 I Late flight Ceilidh Oance Exhibition Hall. Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. 1
Sauchiehall Street. Ticketlink 227 5511. 10.30pm. £5. An Teallach are Tayside favourites with a straight. no-nonsense Scottish accordion and fiddle-based
sound. Glasgow Folk Festival
I Zut! la Chute Scotia Bar. Stockwell
1 Street. 552 8681. 3pm. Free. Glasgow‘s
old-timey American and cajun crowd. I Ceilidh Dance Riverside. Fox Street. off Clyde Street. 248 3144. Doors open 8pm. music at 9pm. £5.
’ Edinburgh
I Balph Blizard Tron Folk Club. Tron Ceilidh House. Hunter Square. 220 1550. 8.30pm. £3. Veteran fiddler from the USA plays old-time and Appalachian music including much from his album Back on the Longbow.
: I The Fife Scruffy Murphy's. George [V Bridge. 225 1681.9pm.
SUNDAY 25
I Glasgow
5 I Music Village Tramway. 25 Albert Drive. 227 551 1. Noon—5pm. This year the Music Village is Pakistani. See
3 Glasgow. Sat 24.
. I Music Village Concert Tramway. 25
3 Albert Drive. 227 5511. 7.30pm.
‘ Quawaali song from Ghazal with the Makrani dancers. See Glasgow. Sat 24. I Opera on a Shoestring (7.30pm): Vin Garbutt ( 10pm). Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. 552 4267. Ticketlink 227 5511. Each concert £7 (£5). Small-scale opera with excerpts from The Barteretl Bride. The Merry lVl(l()Ii'. The Magic Flute etc. Later. funny man and socially conscious songwriter/guitarist Vin Garbutt shows why he‘s been a crowd pleaser for two decades. He's a sharp tin whistle player
5 too. Glasgow Folk Festival
I Blackfriars Band Festival Club. Victorian Bar. Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. - 552 4267. 9pm. Free. Weel kent Glasgow players in an informal set. Glasgow Folk Festival
; Edinburgh I Woodside Now Scruffy Murphy‘s. George 1V Bridge. 225 1681. 9pm.
MONDAY 26
Glasgow
I Opera on a Shoestring (7.30pm): Win and Simeon Jones/Allan and Barnaby Taylor (10pm). Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. 552 4267. Ticketlink 227 5511. Each concert £7 (£5). See Stm 25 for Shoestring. The later concert features two veteran English folk performers in concert with their respective musical progeny. Wizz is one of the leading acoustic blues guitar players from the early days of the British folk blues boom: a massively talented performer. he‘s here with his saxophonist son. Alan Taylor has for three decades been a lauded songwriter and exceptionally skilled and accurate acoustic guitarist. and is here accompanied by his son on piano. Glasgow Folk Festival
I Ian Bruce Festival Club. Victorian Bar. Tron Theatre. 63 Trongate. 552 4267. 9pm. Free. West of Scotland singer/ guitarist. very popular on the clttb circuit. Glasgow Folk Festival
I Ceilidh Dance Class Riverside Club. Fox Street. of‘fClyde Street. 248 3144. 7.3()~l()pm. £3. Bar. Regular caller Karin Ingram. and accordionist Freeland Barbour.
Edinburgh
I Finnegan’s Ouo Scruffy ivlurphy‘s. George IV Bridge. 225 1681. 9pm. Free.
TUESDAY 27
Glasgow
I lain Fraser’s Glasgow Fiddle Workshop (7.30pm): The Stars Band (10pm). Tron Theatre. 63 'I‘rongate. 552 4267. Ticketlink 227 5511. Each concert £7 (£5). Hugely successful weekly Glasgow
AIRS DF GRACE
Glasgow’s renaissance as a city of
folk and traditional music continues.
If the session scene is less vital than
: over in Edinburgh, the concert presentations can teach the capital a ' thing or two. Witness the January
Celtic Connections series, only in its second year but now the biggest in
Britain. Next week, it’s the start of the j
annual Glasgow International Folk Festival and, for once, the International tag is truly apt, with performers arriving from India, USA, France, Holland, Russia, Peru, Spain,
Ireland and even England. Home-grown.
talent is not, however, reduced to a
mere supporting role, with Scots folk 5 bands like the Tannahill Weavers, Old ‘. Blind Dogs and Tannas headlining
some of the Tron Theatre concerts.
A quiet force in Scottish music over the past two decades has been
Cambuslang-born harpist and multi- ; instrumentalist William Jackson. Well, 3
William on the covers of his recent COs, but Billy to the legion of Ossian fans in Britain, Europe and the USA who still have the band’s half-dozen
5 well-worn albums in their collection. ‘ Jackson’s Wellpark Suite was a
commission by a Glasgow brewery conscious of the evolutions in classical/folk composition already taking place over in Ireland, especially the success of Sean Oavey’s Brendan Voyage featuring
Liam O’ Flynn’s pipes bobbing atop an
Billy Jackson
orchestral sea. . The Wellpark Suite, first performed i at the Burrell Collection in 1985, : reversed the Irish balance, with tour i musicians in the majority among the 1 sprinkling of classical and rock ; players on stage. A couple of years
1 later, his suite for Glasgow, entitled St I Mungo, set out to represent the world . of the ancient Celtic saint. This
i conjunction of the spiritual, early
I music, and Scots and Irish traditional
1 music (Billy’s family were from
3 Oonegal and they all returned there each summer) defines the tone of much of his music, occasionally threatening to settle into a New Age Celtic twilight but saved by a vigorous sense of the tradition and the composer’s talent for creating strong, memorable tunes.
His latest album, Inchcolm, sets some of Scotland’s top traditional musicians and singers with the strings of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It has been promoted and released by the Rolls Royce of record labels, Linn. Jackson has few reservations.
‘It’s got drawbacks. It’s the first folkie thing they’ve done, and they don’t quite know the market. I’ve had to point them a little in the right direction, but the advantages are great. With them, it’s quality first. And we’re already talking of a new album. It might be with SCO. They’ve asked me to write a piece for their 21 st anniversary. The full orchestra and about half a dozen traditional players, to be performed at next year’s Celtic Connections. We’ll see.’
Although continuing to work as a music therapist in Scottish health authorities, he finds time to visit the States regularly, touring with his old Ossian partner, guitarist and singer Tony Cuffe, but his forthcoming Glasgow concert concentrates on instrumental excerpts from the r Wellpark, lnchcolm and other pieces arranged for his own harp, flute, whistle and keyboards, with classical/ jazz cellist Wendy Weatherby, Battlefield Band fiddler John McCusker, and Clan Alba’s champion piper Fred Morrison. (llorman Chalmers)
The William Jackson Group plays the Tron Theatre, Sat 24, as part of the Glasgow International Folk Festival.
l
The List 16-20 Jun 1905 47