COVERAGE of next month's Celtic Connections Festival is being widely extended with many live performances being screened online.
Under its BBC Music banner, the broadcaster said it would feature more artists and performances than ever before, with all the performances for Radio 2, Radio 3 and Radio Scotland being shown online.
The UK's biggest winter festival of folk music, there will be two highlights programmes on BBC Two Scotland, featuring performances from many of the artists at the broadcaster's sessions at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), as well as a show dedicated to the opening concert of the festival.
Eileen Herlihy, head of entertainment and events at BBC Scotland, said: "It's very exciting to be at the heart of Celtic Connections again and this year we are putting more resources into filming the featured performances on radio so our audiences across the UK can enjoy even more of the festival experience.
"The festival covers such a wide range of music, connecting artists from so many different genres, it's great to able to treat our audiences to an even bigger helping of some of the best musical talent from Scotland, the UK and beyond."
Radio Scotland kicks off its coverage on Friday 16 January when Janice Forsyth hosts a special edition of The Culture Studio from the CCA, with the station broadcasting live music from the venue from 8pm throughout the following week.
Mark Radcliffe will present more live sessions from the CCA on Monday 26 and Tuesday 27 January, the first show paying tribute to Ewan MacColl, one of British folk music's most influential figures. January 25th marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.
On television, BBC Two Scotland on Thursday 22 January will show highlights from the festival's opening concert including the world premiere of a live performance of GRIT, the final masterpiece of Scottish musician Martyn Bennett, 10 years since his passing.
Also, three shows will be recorded and broadcast weekly from Saturday 31 January on BBC Alba, while the channel will also be recording sessions at Cottiers Theatre in Glasgow's west end, drawing on the pool of talent appearing across the festival.
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 hereComments are closed on this article