CELTIC CONNECTIONS CD 2016

1 Dreamers’ Circus: A Room In Paris

Last year, Scandinavian trio Dreamers’ Circus created something of a buzz with their Celtic Connections appearance at the Mitchell Theatre. This year, building on the success of Second Movement being named Folk Album of the Year at the Danish Music Awards, they’re ready to storm the festival’s main stage. There’s an almost minimalist repetition to the rhythms and phrases of A Room In Paris before layers of accordion and violin soar and glide, not too far in style and intent from our own inventive folk trio, Lau.

(January 24, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall)

2 Rhiannon Giddens: Shake Sugaree

A founder member of Grammy-winning string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens is a formidable fiddler and banjo player. Her debut solo album Tomorrow Is My Turn, produced by the ubiquitous T-Bone Burnett, makes more of her vocal talents, however, as she covers songs by the likes of Dolly Parton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and, here, African-American blues musician Elizabeth Cotton.

(January 27, Old Fruitmarket)

3 The Elephant Sessions: Ainya’s

One of 2014’s most impressive debut records, The Elusive Highland Beauty marked the arrival on the folk scene of Scots-born quintet The Elephant Sessions and their distinctive method of placing traditional melodies on a funkier bedrock. The album’s opening track, Ainya’s, is a good example of how that modern-framed danceability doesn’t compromise a tune’s folk heritage, even when it breaks down to party percussion and guitar riff at the three-quarters’ mark.

(January 30, O2 ABC)

4 Moh! Kouyate: T’en Vas Pas, Ca Va Pas!

Born to a family of griots (storytellers) in Guinea but steeped in Western blues and jazz-pop even before moving to France, Moh! Kouyate makes music that's a perfect blend of styles and cultures separated by geographic miles but not by tone or meaning. The grounding rhythms of this opening track from his debut album Loundo might hark back to his African childhood but listen to that guitar solo – it’s as smooth as George Benson.

(January 21, Oran Mor)

5 Jason Isbell: 24 Frames

In the nine years since he left US southern rockers Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell’s songwriting has developed to such an extent that last year’s solo album Something More Than Free (his fifth since 2007) peaked at No 6 in the Billboard chart and broke him into the Top 20 in the UK for the first time. Lifted from it as a single, 24 Frames finds the newly sober Isbell examining aspects of his life like watching scenes from a movie, weighing up what’s really important now.

(January 24, O2 ABC)

6 Karen Matheson: Ca na dh’fhag thu m’fhichead gini

The loss of her parents sent Capercaillie singer Karen Matheson on a self-described “journey of discovery” which resulted in the solo album Urram (Respect). Personal tales emerge from wider social histories and Hebridean roots, and one of the liveliest tracks is this waulking song in which a man details everything he bought with the 20 guineas he borrowed. The jazzy depths of Ewen Vernal’s double bass and African brightness of Seckou Keita’s kora invest it with the spirit of Celtic Connections.

(January 30, City Halls)

7 Bert Jansch: Blackwaterside

Earth Recordings’ extensive series of reissued albums by legendary guitarist and folk singer Bert Jansch was launched early last year with the release of the 16-song set Live At The 12 Bar (long a fan favourite as bootleg). That night in 1996 Jansch’s rendition of Blackwaterside was flawless: his playing gorgeously bluesy, his singing intimate and mesmerising. Featuring an all-star line-up (including Robert Plant), Bert Inspired: A Concert For Bert Jansch is a fond tribute, and easily one of the hottest tickets of the 2016 festival.

(January 31, Old Fruitmarket; February 1, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall)

8 Blazin’ Fiddles: Shetland Night

North, the seventh studio album from the six-strong group, was released last autumn. It opens in ebullient fashion with Shetland Night, featuring the band’s core four fiddle/guitar/piano set-up, setting out the key musical themes in unison before harmonies split and a certain blues colouring enters the folk phrases. Anyone who caught them live in Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh on New Year’s Day will know what an explosion of energy awaits the Celtic Connections audience.

(January 30, O2 ABC)

9 Frazey Ford: September Fields

One third of Canadian folk group The Be Good Tanyas, Frazey Ford’s second solo album, Indian Ocean, has Memphis soul in its bones and country folk in its blood. Working with Al Green’s old band, The Hi Rhythm Section, she sets standout song September Fields alight with Charles Hodges’s organ, Leroy Hodges’s bass and the late Teenie Hodges’s guitar.

(January 22, O2 ABC)

10 Blick Bassy: Kiki

From Ako (No Format)

Born in 1974 in the Cameroon capital Yaounde, Blick Bassy absorbed the chants and traditions of his Bassa heritage when he went to live with his grandparents in a small village for a couple of years aged ten. Now based in France, that background has filtered into his solo work, but so too has his love for Mississippi blues. The simple melody and picked guitar and banjo on Kiki are set against an unusual combination of cello and trombone.

(January 29, Mitchell Theatre)

11 Solas: The Silver Dagger

Two decades after their formation, Solas continue to lead the pack in contemporary Irish-American music. Recently the current line-up has been getting together with past members for the All These Years recording and touring project, although this particular track, traditional stalwart The Silver Dagger, hails from 2006’s Reunion concert album, and features Deirdre Scanlan on the lead vocal.

(January 21, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall)

12 Rura: Between The Pines

Placed at No 22 in the Sunday Herald’s Top 50 Scottish Albums of 2015, Rura’s second album Despite The Dark meshes Adam Holmes’s songs with powerhouse instrumental music by the Highland quartet. Between The Pines is one of the album’s most rousing anthems, as Holmes’s lyrics “feel a change is coming” and Steven Blake’s tune stirs the post-indyref blood.

(January 29, Old Fruitmarket)

13 Rickie Lee Jones: J’ai Connais Pas

The Other Side Of Desire (Thirty Tigers)

Now a resident of New Orleans, Rickie Lee Jones’s 2015 album The Other Side Of Desire was arguably her strongest set of material since the early days of Chuck E’s In Love; it was certainly the first full album she’d written herself in over a decade. J’ai Connais Pas reeks of the barroom R&B of her adopted home town – it’s as if she’s sitting in with Fats Domino, soaking up the spirit of The Big Easy.

(January 18, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall)

14 Boreas: North Sea Holes

Two parts Scotland (Lori Watson, Rachel Newton), two parts Norway (Britt Pernille Froholm, Irene Tillung), Boreas build a haunting, ethereal bridge between cultures. Ahead of their debut album Ahoy Hoy (released on January 29) comes the single North Sea Holes (written by Ewan MacColl), where beguiling voices and intertwining drones are broken, like sun on the sea surface, by the sparkling notes of Newton’s harp.

(January 30, St Andrew’s In The Square)

15 Iain MacFarlane: Seamus Alec’s Jig Set

If you’re going to set up a recording studio in your native town, you might as well make use of it yourself. Former Blazin’ Fiddles member Iain MacFarlane founded Old Laundry Productions in Glenfinnan and recorded the acclaimed First Harvest album with Iain MacDonald there in 2002. Here however is a sneak peek of The Gallop To Callop, the solo debut of this fine fiddler, which will be launched at Celtic Connections.

(January 20, St Andrew’s In The Square)

16 Clype: The Brush To Paint Us All

North-east duo Simon Gall (pianist with Salsa Celtica) and Jonny Hardie (fiddler with Old Blind Dogs) make an impressive partnership under the banner Clype. There’s a strong political and intellectual backbone to their eponymous debut album, and it raises its head on The Brush To Paint Us All, which attacks media stereotyping in a musical setting that’s often on the borderline between folk music and violin sonata.

(January 30, Tron Theatre)

17 The Unthanks: Died For Love

On the album's release last February, Teddy Jamieson’s Sunday Herald review of Mount The Air by The Unthanks noted “an album that takes the folk tradition the sisters grew up on and sails it into wilder waters”. Younger sister Becky Unthank takes the soft, breathy lead vocal on Died For Love, as Adrian McNally’s strings-and-piano arrangement moves with melancholy beauty towards the lyric’s emotional climax.

(January 28, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall)

18 Anne Carrere: La Foule

December 19 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of French chanteuse Edith Piaf, who died prematurely in 1963. Amid the centenary compilations and live events, one that stood out was Piaf! The Show, an audiovisual journey through Piaf’s life and career during which projected images of the star play behind authentic performances by Anne Carrere, including this waltz about love at first sight in a crowd, a hit for Piaf back in 1957.

(January 27/28, Theatre Royal)