MUSIC
Antipodean harmonica virtuoso Brendan j Power plus Kathryn‘s accompanists.
guitarist Ian Carr and bassist Neil Harland .
I Balnain House Workshops Various classes on instrumental. dance and vocal
353 4137. I Green linnet Festival Club Central Hotel. 10.30pm—1am. Free.
' SATURDAY 20 .
l I Heeltime/Janet Russell and Christine
styles of traditional music. lnfonnation ‘
I Tannaslllan De Cubel Strathclyde Suite. 2pm. £5. Scots band showing their Gaelic roots. with fine songs and fiddle. Support from Asturian band. See Fri 19. I All-Day Ceilidh Fling Tramway. 4pm. £8.50.
I Heritage of the Celts Concert Main Auditorium. 7.30pm. £12.50. £10.50. £7.50. Festival spectacular with a huge cast put together by Breton guitarist Dan Ar Braz. See panel.
I Altan/Smalltalk Barony Hall. 8pm. £12.50. £10.50. Probably the finest lrish band. with a strong Donegal component.
‘ ' , Kydd Strathclyde Suite. 2pm. £5. Exciting I new sounds from Ireland fronted by two 1 dynamic yottng women on fiddle and accordion. Support from Scotland‘s finest 7i. vocal harmony duo. I Afternoon Ceilidh Dance Exhibition 3 Hall. 3pm. £3.50. Music from the Last 3 Tram tae Auchenshuggle. I Carol Laula/Davie Scott Tramway. 8pm. £8.50. Glasgow singer/songwriter ; now a big name in the States. supported by Pearlfishers‘ song man Scott. I Piping Concert Barony Hall. 8pm. £7.50. Breton pipe band Bagad Kemper lead Scots bag blowers Fred Morrison. lain MacDonald and Martyn Bennett, with
beautiful lrish songs and driving twin fiddles. Support from the continually evolving Scots group. now a quartet. with Ossian's Billy Jackson and Billy Ross. I Rock, Salt and Hails/Drop the Box Strathclyde Suite. 8pm. £8.50. Two enthusiastically crowd-pleasing arid uncompromising tnodem approaches to the old traditions of Shetland and the North East. Drums. fiery fiddles. and frantic tempos mixed with original songs and transatlantic tonalities.
I Balnaln House Workshops Various classes on instrumental. dance and vocal styles oftraditional music. Information 353 4137.
I Green Linnet Festival Club Central
: Hotel. 10.30pm—1am. Free.
9 I Capercaillle Royal Concert Hall. 7.30pm. £12.50. £10.50. The voice of Karen Matheson and the polished trad folk/rock discipline of the band make
them one of the biggest draws in Scotland.
TUESDAY 23
I Brian Kennedy plus Special Guests Royal Concert Hall. 7.30pm. £10.50. £8.50. Belfast singer/songwriter in a special concert.
" L ‘5‘. ‘ .
I My vote for Concert of the Festival unites the brilliant lrish duo of acoustic and
electric guitarist Arty McGlynn and fiddler and singer Nollalg Casey, with the equally ;
luminous New Zealand harmonica player Brendan Power and his guitarist Frank
Kllkelly.
To describe them as muslcians’ musicians would be true and not fair. Their music
can be ravishing, sensitive, tender, Insightful, imaginative and exquisime played, but
they can rock and boogie with the best of them, and often do. McGlynn was for years
Van the Man’s preferred guitarist, Power has recorded and performed with Sting and
sightigges, and Casey plays with everyone from Donal Lunny to the RTE Symphony ’ Northumbrian and [fish virtuosos Kathryn
They collaborated to superb effect on Casey and McGlynn’s recent Causeway album, I “We” “I‘d 93" §P'"a"e-
and no doubt will do the same on, sadly, their only Festival performance. (Norman I Bonnie “WW/9'”? To“ Strathclyde
Chalmers) Surte. 8pgi. tlhlpgt. £vlQETxaolZafhk-to-back
COIICCT S V C 1 01 C O C
"'8 [OW-place play‘delaldes 0” Thurs 18' Dubliners.‘ and sugport from veteran
g folkie singer/guitarist.
I Late Night Ceilidh Dance Exhibition Hall. 10.30pm. £5. Music from the Belle
Star Band.
I Balnain House Workshops Various classes on instrumental. dance and vocal styles of traditional music. Information
353 4137.
I Green Linnet Festival Club Central
. Hotel. 10.30pm—lam. Free.
i , SEEM—l — I Pipe Forum Buchanan Suite.
. ~. .. . ~ . noon—7.30pm. £6. Duncan MacGillivray g I Alison Krauss and Union Station Royal :Oégfngi;afi:§:fl§$:p§l33%;,“ : HOILL mjoPm—lam' HLC' : introduces Dougie Pincock. Davy Spillane ' Concert Hall. 7.30pm. £12.50. £10.50.
' i z ' . i Stateside countr rock and blue rass star. classes on instrumental. dance and vocal , "id Fwd Mormon . y g
st les of trad't'onal nusic. lnfonnation 35y} 4137, l l I l I Master Class Exhibition Hall.
I brag" [inner Festival mun Central 12.30pm. Tickets free from box office. Hotel. 10.30pm—lam. Free. 7 songwmmg W'ih Dougie Made”.
: I Celtic Conversation Pieces Strathclyde THURSDAY 18
Suite. 1pm. £3.50. Scots snapper Colin I Community Concert Main Auditorium.
Baxter talks of Scotland's landscape. I Strathclyde University lecture 10.15am. Tickets free from the box office. I Master Class Exhibition Hall.
Buchanan Suite. 2.30pm. Tickets free from box office. ‘A Celtic Overview‘. 12.30pm. Tickets free frotn box office. Highland piper Fred Morrison.
Director of Brittany's Lorient Festival. Jean-Pierre Pichard. I Celtic Conversation Pieces Strathclyde I Rankin Family/[Ian De Cubel Main Suite. 1pm. £3.50. The oval ball discussed ; by Gavin Hastings.
Auditorium. 7.30pm. Rankins. see Thurs I University of Strathclyde Lecture
‘ 18. Six-strong Llan De Cubel are the Tannahill Weavers of Asturias in Northern Buchanan Suite. 2.30pm. Tickets free from the box office. 'The Scots Abroad'r
Spain. mixing bagpipes. flute and fiddle to redefine their own traditional music in a with Paris-based literary lion Kenneth White.
, modem way. £12.50. £10.50. I Wolfstone/Macumba Tramway. 8pm.
I Rankin Family/Kathryn Tlckell Trio £8.50. The famous Highland folk rockers Main Auditorium. Hugely popular are back in town. Macumba do things Canadian/Scots band sing some Gaelic. with bagpipes and Afro-Caribbean step dance. and play clean and tight fiddle rhythms that some people think should be tunes. sometimes straying into soft country/rock ambience. Tickell squeezes
outlawed. Traditional purists. stay away — you might have a good time. out some of the most dextrously beguiling I Dick Gaughan and the MacCalmans Northumbrian music from her little pipes Strathclyde Suite. 8pm. £8.50. Two and fiddle. 7.30pm. £12.50. £10.50. different ways with folk song. I Savourna Stevenson Band/la Lugh lmpassioned political song is at the heart Strathclyde Suite. 8pm. £8.50. Virtuoso of Gaughan‘s repertoire. The Macs Scots harper/composer in six-strongjazz- entertain with strong harmony and a orientated group. Support from the rich strong sense of humour. traditional-based music of the five I Kathryn Tickell and Friends members in lreland's La Lugh. Adelaide's. 8pm. £5. The master I Nollalg Casey and Arty Northumbrian piper and fiddler has some McGlynn/Brendan Power and Frank talented friends. Old-style fiddle and Nllkelly Adelaide's. 8pm. £5. Superb Irish harmonica tnaestros from musicianship from virtuoso fiddler/singer Casey and equally stunning guitarist
2pm. £8.50. From Belfast. Kennedy is a rising star singer/songwriter. highly acclaimed by. among others. Van the Man. : SWAP are a highly unusual amalgam of tasteful lrish and Swedish instrumental stylists. including guitarists' guitarist Ian Carr and with Karen Tweed on accordion. See panel.
McGlynn. Support from astonishing New Zealand/lreland duo on harmonica and guitar.
I Humpff Family/Tartan Amoebas
Tramway. 8pm. £8.50. Anarchic. adventurous good-time dance music from two of the busiest. craziest and most energising bands in Scotland.
I Catriona MacDonald and Ian 3 I Balnaln House Workshops Various lowthlan/Donald Black Adelaide's. 8pm. - classes on instrumental. dance and vocal £5. Scottish/Shetland fiddle and accordion ! styles of traditional music. lnfonnation of great style and authority by two of the y 353 4137,
best younger players around. Support I Green linnet Festival Club Central
I If the Celtic Connections programme lacks anything, it is surely a large-scale original commission which will set the festival apart from the other major events on the circuit. The organisers are aware of that lack, but in a year in which they have chosen to consolidate their achievements while expanding into several new venues, the closest they come to such an occasion is a spectacular import, the Heritage of the Celts concert which closes the festival.
The event first took place to mark the 70th anniversary of the Cornouauille Festival in Brittany, and has been staged at a number of other key Celtic festivals since, but now comes to Britain for the first time. Breton guitarist and composer Dan Ar Braz and Ireland’s Donal lunny are its creative welispring, and they have assembled an impressive roster of talents to help realize Dan Ar Braz‘s vision of a large-scale composition which would pull together many of the diverse strands of Celtic music into a unified whole.
Those talents include singer Karen Matheson and accordionist/keyboard player Donald Shaw from Capercaillle, the brilliant Irish fiddler Nollalg Casey, pipe bands from Brittany and Scotland, and a fonnldable floating cast of fine musicians. (Kenny Mathieson)
Heritage of the Celts, Main Auditorium, Sun 21.
i Northumberland. Will Taylor and Will Atkinson join singer Mike Tickell.
55 The List 12-25 Jan 1996