CELTIC CONNECTIONS
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The 25th Anniversary Concert features a celebration of all the artists who’ve played in the festival over the years, and among the guests are Eddi Reader, Tryst, Salti shforty, Cherish the Ladies, Sharon Shannon, String Sisters and Kris Drever. If fusions of traditional and contemporary classical music are your thing, harp / i ddle partners Catriona McKay and Chris Stout team up with King Creosote and Scottish Ensemble.
D E K N I Thu 18 Jan–Sun 4 Feb, celticconnections.com L The international partner for 2018 is Ireland, and the festival has collaborated with Culture Ireland on bringing leading and emerging artists to the festival, some of whom will feature in the Showcase Scotland weekend. Celtic Connections’ drive towards diversity is not unique to itself. As festival director Donald Shaw says, it’s all part of the direction that Scottish music is taking: ‘The inl uence and inspiration that the traditional music scene has had across the whole musical landscape in Scotland and worldwide has helped to make the journey of Celtic Connections all the more adventurous and exciting.’ Long may it continue to draw connections.
Elsewhere, Northern Irish musician Hannah Peel adopts her Mary Casio persona for a performance of her work Journey to Cassiopeia, which describes a voyage by an octogenarian from Barnsley to outer space; she’s joined by Tubular Brass, who’ll also be having a go at Mike Oldi eld’s Tubular Bells. Another performance to look out for comes from This is the Kit, whose mesmerising single ‘Hotter Colder’ was rotated very much on 6 Music: 2018 could be the year that sees Kate Stables and her ragtag bunch ascend to a new level of popularity.
Celtic Connections, various venues, Glasgow, 1 Nov 2017–31 Jan 2018 THE LIST 57
Chris Stout Celtic Connections celebrates its 25th festival in fi ne globetrotting style. Alex Johnston takes a look at some of this year’s acts from the likes of Scotland, Northern Ireland, the USA, Cuba, Finland, the Congo and Mali
C eltic Connections is one of the very few festivals about which it can truly be said that it has something for everyone. It’s long since expanded beyond its initial focus on folk music, and although the 2018 programme has such beloved i gures of the folk scene as Kate Rusby, Julie Fowlis and the Levellers, there’s also Malian singer Oumou Sangaré, who broke i ve years of silence with her 2017 album Mogoya featuring the great Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen; country singers and sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer singing songs from their duet album Not Dark Yet; and the Cuban singer-guitarist Juan de Marcos and his Afro-Cuban All Stars.
From Tennessee, there’s singer and mandolin prodigy Sierra Hull, only 19 but already on her third album: 2016’s Weighted Mind features guest stars Béla Fleck, Alison Krauss and Rhiannon Giddens, among others, and was nominated for a Grammy. Fiddler’s Bid, from Shetland, headline a concert of their native Shetland i ddle music and are joined by Finland’s splendidly- named Frigg, a seven-piece band playing their own country’s i ddle tunes. The Roaming Roots Revue focuses for the i rst time on a single artist. Roddy Hart, the Lonesome Fire and a host of transatlantic special guests pay tribute to the songbook of the late Tom Petty, who gave the world such much-loved numbers as ‘I Won’t Back Down’, ‘Free Fallin’’ and, as copyright lawyers the world over are agreed, a sizeable chunk of Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’ (‘Sam’s people were very understanding’, as Petty drily commented at the time). Congolese singer and bandleader Jupiter Bokondji appears with his irresistible band Okwess, mixing up soukous and conga music with funk, soul and rock.