The Celtic Connections festival is underway in Glasgow with no shortage of Nonesuch artists participating. Ry Cooder joined the Chieftains in the Royal Concert Hall's Main Auditorium last night, while the Carolina Chocolate Drops played the Hall's Strathclyde Suite. The Low Anthem plays Thursday night, as does Natalie Merchant, who performed live on BBC Radio Scotland’s Global Gathering last night. Sara Watkins joins the festival's multi-artist Transatlantic Sessions this weekend.
The 2010 Celtic Connections festival is underway in Glasgow, Scotland, with no shortage of Nonesuch artists participating in the 17th-annual running of the multi-week, multi-venue event, including Natalie Merchant, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ry Cooder, The Low Anthem, and Sara Watkins.
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Natalie Merchant, who performs with Irish instrumentalists Lúnasa at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall for the festival Thursday night, played a live set on the BBC Radio Scotland last night. Appearing on Mary Ann Kennedy’s Global Gathering last night, Merchant spoke with Ricky Ross and performed five songs, four of which are from her forthcoming Nonesuch debut, Leave Your Sleep. The segment will air again on BBC Radio Scotland and will be played in the coming days on BBC Radio 2, BBC World Service, and BBC Scotland Television. You can listen online at the show's site on bbc.co.uk, where Natalie’s segment begins at about 68 mins in.
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Both Ry Cooder and the Carolina Chocolate Drops performed last night in different venues within the Royal Concert Hall. Cooder was in the Hall's Main Auditorium as special guest of the famed Irish folk band the Chieftains. Cooder and the band, joined by the Mexican quintet Los Cenzontles, for the premiere of a musical collaboration linking the music of Ireland with Mexico and the southern United States. There's more on the project in a Times of London concert preview at timesonline.co.uk.
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For the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the trio's set on the Hall's Strathclyde Suite stage marked the start of a two-week tour of the UK that continues Thursday night at Old Town Hall in Gateshead in northern England and runs through February 6.
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The Low Anthem's upcoming Celtic Connections show at Glasgow's Old Fruitmarket with Edinburgh-born singer-songwriter Fraser Anderson Thursday night is also part of larger European tour, which got under way last night in a sold-out set at the Black Box in Belfast. The trio-turned-quartet heads next to Brussels for a sold-out set at Ancienne Belgique with a number of groups, including Brown Bird, with whom the band tours the Continent in the coming weeks.
The Low Anthem's Jeff Prystowsky spoke with the Scotland Herald's Jonathan Geddes for a preview of tomorrow night show and of the group's next album. In the article, Prystowsky also explains the band's recent expansion, to add another multi-instrumentalist, Matt Davidson, to the mix: “He can play instruments we can’t, like pedal steel guitar, or accordion, so that really adds something else to the new songs.” Read the article at heraldscotland.com.
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And over the weekend, Sara Watkins caps things off when she joins at least seven other singers, including guitarist-mandolinist Dan Tyminski (the voice behind George Clooney's vocals on O Brother Where Art Thou?), and a number of top-notch instrumentalists, under the musical direction of Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas, for Transatlantic Sessions. There will be two shows for Celtic Connections, Friday and Sunday nights, both in the Royal Concert Hall's Main Auditorium, before Watkins and the Transatlantic Sessions group take off for a five-city UK tour.
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For more of what's on at the 2010 Celtic Connections festival, visit celticconnections.com. For tour information on these and other Nonesuch artists, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
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