EVERY January and into February, Glasgow’s extraordinary Celtic Connections festival offers audiences a head-spinning panoply of folk roots music from throughout Scotland and the world. This year, with Covid-19 continuing to wreak its terrible havoc, the doors of the concert halls remain closed and the festival is unable to extend its legendary warm welcome.
What it is able to do, however, is provide an impressive online programme, with new concerts being released every day until February 2. If Friday night’s Opening Celebration Concert is anything to go by, viewers can look forward to a brilliant, diverse and splendidly recorded box of musical delights.
Celtic Connections has seen many eclectic concerts over the years, with performers coming together from a dizzying array of musical traditions. However, the festival’s creative producer Donald Shaw and his team have made a virtue of this year’s necessity to go online, constructing an opening concert that is, surely, more varied than any we have seen before.
READ MORE: Over 125,000 attened Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival
The show includes performances by the likes of Karen Matheson (of Capercaillie fame) and the Celtic Connections Big Band, Duncan Chisholm and the Scottish Ensemble, and dynamic Quebecois quintet Le Vent du Nord. The musical diversity is almost matched by the variety of venues in which the acts are recorded.
The Big Band’s numbers, for instance, come from the main stage of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Chisholm plays in the splendour of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, while Le Vent du Nord were recorded at home in Quebec.
No-one would claim that an online programme can compete with a live festival. However, such is the level of professionalism, in sound and film recording, and in staging, that one has to conclude that the Celtic Connections team have achieved the next best thing.
Early in this fabulous patchwork quilt of a concert, Karine Polwart and friends, performing in Glasgow City Chambers, give a lovely foretaste of a concert that is set for initial broadcast tomorrow evening. Polwart dedicates her song of welcome, Come Away In, to those seeking refuge.
A touching lyric, sung with Polwart’s typical warmth and honesty, the song could almost be the anthem of those who would like Scotland to give a warmer embrace to asylum seekers and refugees. Tomorrow’s concert, itself entitled Come Away In, also features Eddi Reader, Rab Noakes, Siobhan Miller and Findlay Napier.
From the south of Celtic Europe, Galician maestro Xabier Diaz and his group offer a fascinating fusion of the musical traditions of Galicia with those of neighbouring Portugal. Diaz, playing his fabulous hurdy-gurdy, is supported memorably by the female percussionists and singers of the Adufeiras de Salitre ensemble, who play on adufes (Portuguese square frame-drums of Moorish origin).
READ MORE: How Celtic Connections overcame the challenges of the pandemic to go ahead in 2021
If Diaz and colleagues create an original, energised musical hybrid, composer and fiddle player Chisholm and the Scottish Ensemble play a piece, entitled A Precious Place, that is simultaneously sweet and melancholic. Taken from a concert that can be viewed on BBC iPlayer for the next four weeks, the tune and Chisholm’s virtuosic playing of it are almost heartbreaking in their beauty.
Chisholm’s piece is an undoubted highlight of a universally accomplished, international showcase. So, too, is the performance of Gambian singer and multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire Sona Jobarteh.
Jobarteh and her band perform a tune that is wonderfully typical of the rich musical traditions of sub-Saharan West Africa. The singer-musician plays the kora (West African harp) with a dexterity and feeling akin to that of Malian master Toumani Diabate.
The Gambian musician is also possessed of a remarkable singing voice. By turns plaintive, resonating and powerful, it might almost be compared with the soaring vocals of the great Salif Keita. Jobarteh is part of a concert that will have its first broadcast, via the Celtic Connections website, this evening.
These are just some of the highlights of an opening online concert that stands as a great testament to the commitment of both the Celtic Connections team (from programmers to technicians) and the musicians. Others who offer samples of their excellent wares include the all-female Kinnaris Quintet, who, resplendent in sequins, recorded the appropriately entitled and up-beat tune This Too Shall Pass at the Old Fruitmarket venue in Glasgow.
READ MORE: Celtic Connections: How the show goes on despite the Covid-19 pandemic
Glasgow-based, all-male quintet Imar offer a similarly rollicking piece, called, less calmly, Revenge, while Elephant Sessions’ pop-folks roots fusion is accompanied by so many flashing lights that it should probably come with a health warning.
Listen out, too, for a haunting, turned quickly vigorous Armenian number performed by the Big Band. Add to that Fiona Hunter and Rant, among others.
This opening concert is a glorious musical cornucopia that is bound to whet your appetite for the online festival to come.
The Celtic Connections Opening Celebration Concert can be viewed online until January 22. For festival passes and further information, visit: celticconnections.com
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