VETERAN Liverpool soul group The Real Thing have announced a tour to mark the 40th anniversary of their debut single You to Me Are Everything. The dates, which run from March to December, begin in Scotland at Inverness Ironworks (Friday March 10) and Montrose Town Hall (Saturday March 11).

Still featuring the original front lint of Chris and Eddie Amoo and Dave Smith, the band's catalogue of hits – also including Can't Get By With You and Can You Feel the Force? – made them the UK's best-selling black group in the late 1970s. Their 1977 album track Children of the Ghetto has been covered by artists including Mary J Blige and Courtney Pine and Love's Such a Wonderful Thing was sampled by French dancefloor-fillers Daft Punk for their So Much Love To Give.

The Real Thing will also be appearing at this summer's Rewind Festival at Scone Palace by Paerth on Saturday July 22.

thelegendaryrealthing.com

SINGER songwriter Ewan McLennan and writer and journalist George Monbiot are taking their collaborative album Breaking the Spell of Loneliness out on the road, with dates including an appearance at Glasgow's Celtic Connections in the Mackintosh Church at Queen's Cross.

The album began with a column Monbiot wrote in the Guardian newspaper about loneliness being an affliction of our age. As its readership demanded that he expand on his ideas, he approached McLennan and proposed a collaboration. The resulting suite of songs combine both reportage and personal stories, with some of Scotland's finest trad musicians guesting on the album.

On the tour, Monbiot will narrate the show and invite contributions from the audience, with McLennan performing the songs. The dates includes Inverness Eden Court Theatre on February 2, the Glasgow concert the following night, Edinburgh's Reid Concert Hall on February 4 and The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen on February 5.

ewanmclennan.co.uk

DUNEDIN Consort, directed by John Butt, has concerts of orchestral suites and cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach at the end of this month. The compositions date from the years when Bach was music director at Leipzig's Collegium Musicum as well as Cantor of the Thomasschule, with two instrumental suites being paired with Cantatas 111 and 81.

Flautist Katy Bircher is the featured soloist, and the singers for the vocal works are soprano Emily Mitchell, alto Meg Bragle and tenor Nicholas Mulroy.

The programme can be heard at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall on Friday January 20 and St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen on Saturday January 21.

dunedin-consort.org.uk