Prospect recommends: Celtic Connections

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnCzG536Gg0&feature=player_embedded

Celtic ConnectionsGlasgow, 19th January-5th February

It’s an intrepid soul that heads to Glasgow for two weeks in January, but the festival Celtic Connections, now in its 19th year, pulls an audience of over 120,000 to 14 venues around the city. Though the name suggests Scottish and Irish fare, the pipes and the penny whistle, it also attracts the cream of American roots and bluegrass musicians, many of whom consider it their most important European date and rarely turn up elsewhere in Britain. American roots music has always embraced its Celtic ancestry and the whirlwind jazz/bluegrass hybrid of bands like Béla Fleck and The Flecktones owes as much to the Scottish reel as it does to duelling banjos.

Other highlights this year include mandolin whiz Chris Thile and his Punch Brothers, and Louisiana folk singer Mary Gauthier. During the day there are workshops—harmony singing, ukelele—for the practically minded; the late night shows give rise to surprising musical experiments. The Transatlantic Sessions, curated by fiddle legend Aly Bain and Alison Krauss’s Dobro player, Jerry Douglas, close the fortnight with a kind of all-star roots drop-in. The festival is always broadening its remit; this year it hosts the veteran Senegalese-Cuban fusion band Orchestra Baobab and Bruce “That’s Just The Way It Is” Hornsby, whose live performances feature inspired jazz improvisations.