Celtic Connections 2024: Scotsman folk critic Jim Gilchrist on what to see at this year's festival

With Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival poised to banish the winter gloom later this month, Jim Gilchrist picks his highlights from this year’s programme

Now in its 31st year, Celtic Connections, Glasgow’s gargantuan roots-based winter music festival, is once again set to banish January blues from 18 January until 4 February. As some 300 events erupt across the Dear Green Place, with Scottish notables joined by guests from Europe, North America, West Africa and India, here is a tentative handful of suggestions, spanning cultures and genres.

Opening Night (18 January) at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (GRCH) sees the European premiere of Attention!, an orchestral work by American mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile. Known for playing with Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers, but as likely to be found performing with such classical stars as Yo-Yo Ma, here Thile joins the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, along with Scottish singer-songwriter Rachel Sermanni.

Possibly the festival’s most talked about event is the re-united Bothy Band (22 January, GRCH), one of the most influential groups to emerge from the Irish folk explosion of the 1970s. In their first public concert since 1979, surviving members bouzouki player Donal Lunny, singer-keyboardist Tríona ní Dhomhnaill, flautist Matt Molloy, piper Paddy Keenan and fiddlers Paddy Glackin and Kevin Burke are joined by guitarist Seán Óg Graham.

Chris Thile PIC: Gaelle Beri

Celebrating their 50th year, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra join American singer Aoife O’Donovan, Paul Buchanan, co-founder of the renowned Blue Nile, US-based Scots harpist Maeve Gilchrist and folk power trio Lau (26 January, GRCH).

For full-tilt strings (and another birthday) Blazin’ Fiddles (27 January) celebrate their 25th anniversary at the Pavilion, supported by Irish troubadour Daoiri Farrell. And in the Barony Hall (2 February), fiddler Gavin Marwick marks the finale of his unique Quarterdays project with Ruth Morris on nyckelharpa, harpist Wendy Stewart, Aaron Jones on cittern, accordionist-pianist Phil Alexander and piper-whistle-player Fraser Fifield.

Amid an extensive world music programme, the charismatic Beninese multiple Grammy-winner Angélique Kidjo celebrates 40 years of music and activism at GRCH (29 January) with support from Senegalese singer Samba Sene, while at the Old Fruitmarket on 3 February, Malian star Fatoumata Diawara taps into ancestral and contemporary voices, along with Spanish singer and composer Carola Ortiz.

For some powerful home-grown voices, the City Halls on 3 February hosts Scots Women: Generations o’ Change, featuring traditional singers including Sheena Wellington, Aileen Carr, Claire Hastings, Corrina Hewat and the North-East a cappella trio Tripple, with musical director Iona Fyfe.

Extensive Gaelic presence includes Metagama & Marloch (21 January, GRCH New Auditorium), a commemoration of the mass Hebridean emigration to Canada on board the Metagama during 1923-24, devised by Liza Mulholland and Donald S Murray. The cast includes Gaelic singer and piper Calum Alex Macmillan, fiddle player Charlie McKerron and actor and writer Dolina MacLennan.

Meanwhile Gaelic song ambassador Julie Fowlis assembles guests including harmony collective Binneas at Kelvingrove Art Gallery (27 January), while the powerful west Highland band Dàimh appears in the splendid setting of the Mackintosh Church (26 January) along with Swedish-Norwegian trio Ævestaden.

There’s further musical drama at the Tramway on 3 February when Lau accordionist and award-winning composer Martin Green’s show Split The Air celebrates brass bands and the power of community and collective action in a performance with the Green and Whitburn Band, featuring former BBC Young Musician of the Year, Sheona White, on tenor horn, and dramatic narration directed by the National Theatre’s Tom Morris.

Red Clydeside: The John Maclean Centenary Concert (19 January, GRCH) sees eminent singers and songwriters such as Karine Polwart, Billy Bragg, Eddi Reader, Siobhan Miller, Kapil Seshasayee and poet Jackie Kay saluting the great Scottish socialist with songs new and old.

Finally, The Robert Tannahill 250th Anniversary Concert (1 February, GRCH) celebrates the Paisley-born weaver poet, with singers Fiona Hunter, John Morran and Cameron Nixon accompanied by Marc Duff, Phil Alexander and Angus Lyon, among others, and commentary from producer Fred Freeman.

It was Tannahill who penned “Gloomy winter’s noo awa …” If not entirely banishing seasonal gloom, Celtic Connections certainly enlivens an often dismal time of year.

For full programme details, see www.celticconections.com