FOR 25 years Celtic Connections has been a mainstay on the Scottish gigging calendar, brightening up the winter and helping to banish the January blues.
This year’s event, from Thursday January 18 to Sunday February 4, saw over 2,000 artists, 300 shows and 20 venues.
There were world music stars, arena gigs and a host of unique collaborations, as well as the likes of the ever popular Danny Kyle Open Stage.
In the most ambitious event in 25 years of Celtic Connections, The GRIT Orchestra performed the late Martyn Bennett’s second album Bothy Culture at the SSE Hydro, complete with a special appearance by stunt cyclist Danny MacAskill, aerial dancers, and a commitment to getting people dancing all night long.
The January 27 gig was one of the centrepieces of this year’s bash but there were many other highlights.
Shawn Colvin played at the Royal Concert Hall, 20 years after the South Dakota native released her classic album A Few Small Repairs.
A man with links to the glory days of southern R ’n’ B, Lee Fields together with his band the of Brooklyn soul veterans The Expressions appeared at Oran Mor.
Events such as The Baltimore Fiddle Fair at St Andrews In The Square, served as a celebration of that tradition offering up the Irish duos of Liam Flanagan & Derek Hickey and Cormac & Ciodhna Begley, plus many other guests.
Festival favourites Dougie MacLean played songs old and new, a full 40 years after he released his debut album Caledonia he is as relevant today as he was then.
By contrast, Highland quartet Elephant Sessions took folk, rock and electronica and spun it together into a dizzying package at The Old Fruitmarket.
And Sharon Shannon, 25 years after the Irish star appeared at the first festival joined a host of returning faces such as Eddi Reader, Cherish the Ladies, Maya Youssef and Admiral Fallow frontman Louis Abbott.
Closing out this year’s jamboree were Manran, a year after they released their third album An Da La – The Two Days. They were joined by Irish quartet the Young Folk and special guests to ensure a memorable party.
There were many other terrific evenings ... browse through the slideshow above and check some of them out.
For more on Celtic Connections check www.celticconnections.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here