HIGHLANDS-born, Donegal-based banjo player Ian Carmichael has released an album, Ten Years On, to show that the five-string banjo can be as effective a vehicle for traditional tunes as its more typically favoured four-stringed equivalent.

Carmichael, who spent two years in America pursuing his bluegrass heroes before returning to Scotland and joining in the early 1990s Edinburgh folk music scene, has been based in Ireland for the past twenty years and has built an international reputation as a player of Irish and Scottish traditional music as well as bluegrass and old-time American music. Ten Years On features him in session with leading Irish traditional musicians including guitarists Garry O'Briain and Paul McSherry and percussionist Tommy Hayes.

iancarmichael.net

SCOTTISH-Indian fusion group Red Note Ensemble continues its Reels to Ragas project with a series of concerts and workshops in the Highlands and Islands in March. Tabla player Kuljit Bhamra and piper-and-multi-instrumentalist Fraser Fifield join cellist Robert Irvine and violinist Jackie Shave in playing new and familiar love songs, dance tunes and Bollywood moods at Mission House, Harris (March 6); Ceilidh Place, Ullapool (7th); Universal Hall, Findhorn (8th); Victoria Hall, Glenbuchat, Aberdeenshire (9th); and Big Shed, Tombreck, near Killin (10th). Bhamra will also be giving hands-on Indian drumming workshops at the venue on the afternoon of each concert.

rednoteensemble.com

GLASGOW-based singer-songwriter John Hinshelwood has announced a busy schedule of dates with his band for the first half of 2015, including concerts with Nashville duo Cathryn Craig & Brian Willoughby and leading English folk singers Chris & Kellie While. Hinshelwood, whose 2014 CD release, Lowering the Tone, was widely admired and received significant radio exposure, plays Tchai Ovna in Glasgow on February 24, the Meeting Place, Rutherglen (February 27), and The Star Folk Club, Glasgow (March 24), with dates around the UK to follow.

hinshelwood.blogspot.com

FIDDLERAlastair Savage and classical trumpeter turned singer-pianist-guitarist Euan Drysdale celebrate Robert Burns' birthday two days early at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh on Friday [January 23] at 7.30pm. Burns' radical spirit will probed and his music compared and contrasted with his Perthshire contemporary, fiddle music legend Niel Gow's in a concert of traditional music and folk-blues interpretation.

scottishstorytellingcentre.com