Glasgow’s Counterflows Festival has just announced its featured artist as part of the launch of its programme for 2016. New York, harpist, composer and improviser Zeena Parkins, pictured, will be bringing the first UK performance of her Lace Project and also performing in various intimate concerts across the festival. The rest of the programme will include Turkish clarinet Maestro Cuneyt Sepecti, Danish sax firebrand Mette Rasmussen, hip hop cult legend Inga Copeland, the Scottish debut of Graham Lambkin and Billy Bao and a rare solo performance north of Watford by piano master Pat Thomas. The festival will take place from April 8 to 10 and early bird festival passes are now available.

counterflows.com

Martin Green, of contemporary folk trio Lau, will have a new piece he has composed for the world famous Kronos Quartet premiered at London’s Barbican in May. Tickets go on sale today (Friday, November 27) for the Grammy-award winnign San Francisco-based string quartet’s concert on May 9, where the world premiere of Green’s work will be part of a programme that also features Terry Riley’s One Earth, One People, One Love, works by Laurie Anderson and Komitas, an arrangement of The Who’s Baba O’Riley and UK premieres of music by Aleksandra Vrebalov, Garth Knox and Fodé Lassana Diabaté from the Kronos Fifty for the Future project.

barbican.org.uk

Singers from three Gaelic traditions – Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man – appear at this year’s Advent Fest in Leith today (Friday, November 27). Mary Ann Kennedy, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin and Ruth Keggin, pictured, will be joined by Argyll guitarist Finlay Wells in Aon Teanga: Un Çhengey, which translates as “one tongue”, for a programme of traditional and newly composed songs with a maritime theme at St James Church in St John’s Place at 7:30pm.

adventfest.org

Edinburgh-based acoustic duo the Jellyman's Daughter has been invited to appear Folk Alliance, the prestigious international roots festival in Kansas City in February with support from Creative Scotland. The two musicians, singer-guitarist Emily Kelly and cellist-singer Graham Coe, will appear in a final day package with legendary Greenwich Village songwriter Eric Andersen and his fellow American troubadour Peter Case. Kelly and Coe recently returned from a successful, month-long European tour and play Edinburgh’s Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh on December 6; Cottier’s, Glasgow on December 20th; and the Blue Lamp, Aberdeen on December 31 to coincide with the release of a new EP.

thejellymansdaughter.com