Full listings for Celtic Connections 2013

Celtic Connections, Glasgow’s biggest music festival, launched its programme for 2013. Here are the events announced so far.

• Celtic Connections 20th Celebration Concert

Thu 17 January, 7:30pm

£23, £20

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

Whether you’re a Celtic Connections veteran or it’s your first time here, we hope our 20th opening concert distils some of the unique collective spirit that has built the festival into one of contemporary Scotland’s flagship events. As it’s grown, many of the artists featured tonight have grown up with it, or reached new audiences via its stages, joining the intricate, ever-expanding, increasingly globe-spanning network of musical relationships forged and renewed each January - connections which feed back in turn into subsequent years’ programmes. Tonight’s celebration also focuses back on the Scottish and traditional-based sounds that have always been Celtic Connections’ primary inspiration, with performers including Sheena Wellington, Eddi Reader, Julie Fowlis, the newly re-formed Flook, Cara Dillon, Capercaillie, Chris Stout, Finlay MacDonald, the ScottishPower Pipe Band and a specially-convened festival string ensemble helmed by Greg Lawson. • Vicente Amigo - ‘Tierra’ and Carminho

Fri 18 January, 7:30pm

£23, £20

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

Pat Metheny calls Vicente Amigo “the greatest guitarist alive”. That the boundary-busting US jazz legend thus hails a Spanish flamenco player further underlines the transcendent magic of Amigo’s extraordinary artistry. In 25 years of pursuing his muse, the Córdoba-born, Latin Grammy-winning maestro has collaborated with a cross-genre galaxy of fellow greats including David Bowie, Bob Dylan and John McLaughlin, refining his virtuosity to pyrotechnic heights of innovation, while finding a bottomless creative wellspring in his native music’s authentic primal spirit, or duende.

After Mariza, 27-year-old Carmo Rebelo de Andrade - Carminho - has been widely hailed as Portugal’s next major international fado star. Citing influences from Amália Rodrigues and Lucília do Carmo to Queen and the Beatles, she sings with a raw intensity and exquisite tenderness that carry a knockout emotional charge.

• Sam Lee and Rory Butler

Fri 18 January, 7:30pm

£13

St Andrew’s in the Square

A former visual artist, wilderness survival teacher and burlesque dancer, who was also ‘adopted’ by the late Aberdeenshire bard Stanley Robertson as heir to his wealth of traveller lore, Sam Lee won a 2012 Mercury Prize nomination for his stunning debut album Ground Of Its Own, featuring deeply faithful yet bravely radical treatments of traditional songs sourced around the British Isles. “Extraordinary and wonderful” (Songlines).

• Jeremy Kittel Band and Support

Fri 18 January, 7:30pm

£13

Mitchell Theatre

With a background encompassing childhood classical tuition, teenage immersion in Scottish and Irish folk, a Masters in jazz performance and five years with Grammy-winning innovators the Turtle Island Quartet, the Michigan-born, Brooklyn-based fiddler Jeremy Kittel is a fast-rising star of contemporary Celtic music. Renowned as a fearlessly gifted improviser, he seamlessly intertwines bold yet sensitive traditional arrangements with superb original tunes.

• New Rope String Band and Support

Fri 18 January, 8:00pm

£13

Tron Theatre

String bands don’t traditionally include an accordion - but then circus, clowning, vaudeville, slapstick and contortionism aren’t exactly genre staples either; nor are gales of euphorically helpless laughter the customary expression of approval. All such bets are emphatically off, however, at a New Rope String Band show, featuring three manically talented minstrels who’ll tickle both your funny bone and your musical tastebuds beyond your wildest imaginings. “It’s impossible not to love them” (Shetland Times).

• Solas “Shamrock City” and Support

Fri 18 January, 9:30pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

The mining town of Butte, Montana, once employed so many Irish immigrants that it was nicknamed Shamrock City. Among these particular huddled masses was Solas founder Seamus Egan’s great-great uncle, who literally fought his way there - as a bare-knuckle boxer - after landing in Philadelphia from Cork, only to be murdered a few years later. In their most ambitious project to date, the Irish-American supergroup have built on this century-old episode of family history to create a body of music both honouring the Irish experience as the backbone of the US industrial revolution, and addressing current debates over immigration. With an album due in 2013 and a DVD in the works, tonight’s performance incorporates archive and newly-shot film footage from Butte itself, and family stories contributed to the project by Solas’s myriad worldwide fans.

• Sabhal Mòr Ostaig 40th Celebration Concert

Sat 19 January, 7:30pm

£17

City Halls, Grand Hall

When the now internationally-renowned Skye college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig first opened its doors in 1973, the Gaelic landscape was a very different place. The language’s ongoing revival, not least through music, can be substantially traced to this trailblazing institution’s work, which currently ranges from a Gaelic-medium BA in traditional music to hosting the historical dictionary project Faclair na Gàidhlig. Tonight’s vast cast of past and current tutors, alumni and students - including Julie Fowlis, Alasdair Fraser, Fergie MacDonald, Dàimh, Christine Primrose and Margaret Stewart - plus very special guest Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, of Limerick University’s Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, promises one mighty 40th birthday ceilidh.

• The Once and Mary Dillon

Sat 19 January, 7:30pm

£13

St Andrew’s in the Square

With their second album, 2011’s Row Upon Row of the People They Know, The Once cemented their status as the most exciting act to emerge from Newfoundland since Great Big Sea. The trio combine poetic original songwriting, stripped-back traditional ballads and reinvented contemporary covers - from Cohen to Queen - with gorgeous vocal harmonies and subtle acoustic accompaniment.

For those lucky enough to hear her with Déanta during the 1990s, Cara Dillon’s big sister Mary was always a singer of equally sublime though delicately distinct calibre. After raising a family, she’s back making music with new vocal trio Sí Van, alongside a fresh crop of solo material.

• The Shetland Bus and Support

Sat 19 January, 7:30pm

£13

Mitchell Theatre

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the extraordinary wartime story enshrined in Jenna and Bethany Reid’s narrated musical suite The Shetland Bus (premiered at Celtic Connections 2010), tonight’s performance unveils a new collaboration between the Reids’ original six-piece ensemble and the National Youth Brass Band of Scotland, expanding and enriching the music’s beautifully vivid evocation of disaster, escape, heroism and survival against all odds.

• Luke Daniels’ Band and Support

Sat 19 January, 8:00pm

£13

Tron Theatre

A former teenage winner of the BBC Young Tradition Award, button accordionist Luke Daniels is one of the UK’s most gifted and inventive exponents of Irish music, as well as a bold cross-genre adventurer. Following huge acclaim for his 2011double album The Mighty Box, 71 tunes freshly invigorated by new tuning and fingering, Daniels appears tonight with Tim Edey (guitar), Éamon Doorley (bouzouki), Lauren MacColl (fiddle) and Calum Stewart (flute).

• Petunia & The Vipers with Woody Pines

Sat 19 January, 8:00pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

Rockabilly, swing, honky-tonk and hillbilly sounds form the vintage core of Petunia & The Vipers’ high-octane music, but this unique Canadian combo - especially their hugely charismatic frontman - throw myriad creative curveballs into the mix, from slinky French chanson to raw punk attack, Latin grooves to gypsy flamboyance. Allied with top-drawer musicianship, the live result, says California’s North Coast Journal, is “irresistible, contagious, astounding and totally entertaining.”

The eponymously-led US roots outfit Woody Pines have already added a sizeable Scottish following to their extensive home fanbase, combining country blues, ragtime, early jazz and jug-band styles with modern-day vaudeville showmanship and superb technical prowess. Vibrantly earthy yet brilliantly slick, buoyed by dance-hall rhythms and fuelled by fiery moonshine spirit, their sound draws deep down the decades while sparkling with feelgood freshness.

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• New Voices Revisted with Duncan Lyall - ‘Infinite Reflections’ and Angus Lyon - ‘3G’

Sun 20 January, 1:00pm

£11

Mitchell Theatre

It’s always hoped that the music created from the New Voices commissions will have a life beyond its Celtic Connections première, be it in further performances or in recorded form. So it’s a double pleasure to present this live reprise of two highly-praised concerts from previous years - bassist Duncan Lyall’s Infinite Reflections, unveiled just twelve months ago, and accordionist Angus Lyon’s 2011 composition 3G - an occasion which also launches CD versions of each piece. With both artists’ ensembles sharing around half their line up - including Ali Hutton, Innes Watson, and Alyn Cosker as well as Lyall and Lyon themselves - the celebratory spirit will be running high.

• Cara Dillon with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Sun 20 January, 7:30pm

£17

City Halls, Grand Hall

As Cara Dillon’s exquisitely eloquent vocal talent has continued to flourish and deepen - ever since she joined traditional band Óige, aged just 15 - the latest in a steady succession of major accolades came in 2012, when her latest album’s title track, ‘Hill of Thieves’, was voted among Northern Ireland’s all-time Top 10 original songs by BBC Radio Ulster listeners. Also in 2012, she gave a very special performance in Belfast’s Grand Opera House with the Ulster Orchestra, featuring gorgeous new arrangements of songs from across her gem-studded back catalogue - a concert we’re delighted to reprise here, featuring the consistently world-class BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

• Scots in the Spanish Civil War

Sun 20 January, 7:30pm

£13

Mitchell Theatre

Among the 35,000 international volunteers who joined Spain’s anti-Fascist forces between 1936 and 1939, more came from Scotland, proportionately, than any other country. Following Greentrax Recordings’ landmark Great War commemoration Far, Far From Ypres - and the subsequent unforgettable live show at Celtic Connections 2012 - Scotland’s leading folk label recently released the 17-track ¡No Pasaran! Scots in the Spanish Civil War, spanning anthems and elegies sung by Brigadistas themselves, to songs written especially for the project. Under Ian McCalman’s peerless musical direction, performers tonight from the album’s stellar line-up include Iain Anderson, Alison McMorland & Geordie McIntyre, Christine Kydd, George Archibald, Frank Rae, The Wakes and Gallo Rojo.

• Mulatu Astatke and Lucas Santtana

Sun 20 January, 8:00pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

A hugely influential giant of African music, Ethiopian multi-instrumentalist and composer Mulatu Astatke enjoyed his original heyday during the 1960s and 70s, in both New York and Addis Ababa, pioneering the fusion of American jazz, funk and Latin sounds with his native traditional scales and melodies. An artist who remains “hungry, eager, innovative and forward-thinking” (BBC Music), he continues to win new listeners today, recording his latest album, 2010’s Mulatu Steps Ahead, with members of cutting-edge combos The Either/Orchestra and The Heliocentrics alongside Ethiopian folk musicians.

A former flautist in Gilberto Gil’s band, Lucas Santtana has been hailed as a one-man Brazilian music revolution, cross-matching classic and contemporary styles with live and sampled sounds including reggaetón, electronic, classical music, indie-rock and tecnobrega. “One of the hottest musical properties south of the equator.” (AllMusic)

• The Mavericks and Support

Tue 22 January, 7:30pm

£31, £28

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

For lead singer Raul Malo, The Mavericks’ reunion in 2012 is “a testament to faith, fate, and chance”. For drummer Paul Deakin, it’s rekindled “a way of being in tune we don’t have with anyone else”, while bassist Robert Reynolds encapsulates the mood of new Mavericks album In Time - out January 2013 - as “big love, big loss, big joy - and party!” Cited influences on the album range from Dean Martin to ZZ Top, George Jones to Ravel, enriching the Mavericks’ famously no-borders fusion of country, garage, Latin, soul and torch-song sounds with fresh passion and deep-dyed maturity.

• Mardi Gras.BB and The Bevvy Sisters

Tue 22 January, 7:30pm

£14

O2 ABC

Originally formed for a party back in 1992, German cult heroes Mardi Gras.BB deploy the New Orleans marching-band template as a launchpad into all manner of offbeat musical adventures. With a line-up of massed brass, electric guitars, vocals, percussion and DJ, their 2012 release Crime Story Tapes reimagines the film noir atmosphere and lindy-hop/jump-jive dance crazes of 1940s New York.

Suitably sassy, sophisticated and swingin’ support comes from stunning Scottish vocal trio The Bevvy Sisters - Heather Macleod, Gina Rae and Kaela Rowan - casting their seductive harmonic spell in a mix of vintage jazz, country and original material, sharply backed by guitarist David Donnelly and percussionist James Mackintosh.

• Tanita Tikaram and Al Lewis

Tue 22 January, 7:30pm

£14

Mitchell Theatre

A quarter-century on from her multi-platinum debut Ancient Heart, released when she was still a teenager, the fabulously smoke’n’velvet-voiced singer and songwriter Tanita Tikaram operates rather more under the radar nowadays, nonetheless building a groundswell of fresh acclaim over the last decade, most recently for 2012’s Americana-inspired Can’t Go Back. “If ever an artist has grown into her voice, it’s Tikaram.” (Guardian)

Hotly-tipped young Welsh singer-songwriter Al Lewis journeyed all the way to Nashville to record 2012’s Battles, his second English-language album (he also performs and records in Welsh), with Civil Wars producer Charlie Peacock, seeking and finding the perfect complement to his warm, rootsy, 70s-steeped songcraft.

• Crows’ Bones and Support

Wed 23 January, 7:30pm

£13

St Andrew’s in the Square

As its title suggests, Lau accordionist Martin Green’s latest devious sideshow Crows’ Bones, commissioned by Opera North, plays on our fearful fascination with the spectral not in a familiarly cosy, fireside-stories fashion, but as an extended exercise in authentic creepiness. Inspired by wintry northern songs and tales of ghosts, ghouls and unquiet spirits, this eerily theatrical show also features singers Becky Unthank and IngeThompson, with nyckelharpist Niklas Roswall and a cobwebby cupboardful of acoustic sound effects.

• An Evening with Cowboy Junkies and John Murry

Wed 23 January, 8:00pm

£20

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

With 2013 marking 25 years since the Cowboy Junkies’ second album The Trinity Session, a seminal early harbinger of the entire alt.country movement, the band have recently been reaffirming their enduringly restive, exploratory spirit with the widely-acclaimed Nomad Series, four loosely-themed albums highlighting the sometimes-overlooked diversity of their music, from darkly acerbic to inventively experimental, country-folk ethereality to squally grunge-rock.

Mississippi-born John Murry’s backstory includes 18 months in fundamentalist-run rehab as a teenager, and a subsequent near-death heroin overdose. Such extremes of dark-side experience potently fuel his 2012 solo debut The Graceless Age, hailed by Uncut as “an album of almost symphonic emotional turmoil”, and by R2 as “a genuine American masterpiece.”

• Kate Rusby 20 Year Celebration with Special Guests

Thu 24 January, 7:30pm

£25, £22

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

As well as marking a certain royal anniversary, 2012 was also a jubilee year for one of the UK’s undisputed folk aristocrats, Yorkshire singer Kate Rusby, who celebrated two decades in the music business with her 11th album 20, comprising newly-recorded favourites from throughout her much-garlanded career. Its glittering array of guests - including Paul Weller, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nic Jones, Richard Thompson, Jerry Douglas, Chris Thile, Paul Brady and Radiohead’s Philip Selway - reflect the huge esteem in which Rusby’s work is held, with some of them joining her regular band for this very special concert.

• Glasgow St Patrick’s Day Festival

Thu 24 January, 7:30pm

£13

St Andrew’s in the Square

Following its successful debut as a week-long city-centre event last March, the Glasgow St Patrick’s Festival gears up for Paddy’s Day 2013 as hosts of this collaborative concert showcase for the UK’s Irish musical diaspora, featuring 13 musicians from four different cities.

A Glasgow contingent of eight, largely drawn from the Comhaltas/St Roch’s Ceili Band ranks, might seem like an unfair home advantage, but there’s little doubting that London-born accordion firebrand Damien Mullane (with ex-Lunasa guitarist Donogh Hennessy), Leeds guitar/piano/fiddle duo Chris O’Malley and Des Hurley, and Manchester singer-songwriter, fiddler and tin whistle ace Grace Kelly will collectively hold their own.

• This Is The Kit with Moulettes

Thu 24 January, 7:30pm

£13

Oran Mor

Centred around the winsomely wayward talents of Kate Stables (vocals, guitar, banjo, trumpet, percussion), This Is The Kit are a shape-shifting outfit evolved between Bristol and Paris, making hushed, homespun, autumnal music, layered around Stables’s enchanting vocals and inventive wordcraft. “Absolutely gorgeous - like an aural bath with the warm water lapping over you.” (Cerys Matthews, Radio 6)

• Caravan Palace plus Support

Thu 24 January, 7:30pm

£15

O2 ABC

From unlikely beginnings (being hired to score rediscovered 1930s silent adult movies), Caravan Palace have become a veritable sensation in their native France, selling 150,000 copies of their 2009 debut album while stampeding to the forefront of the burgeoning electro-swing vogue. On 2012’s follow-up Panic!, their core fusion of gypsy-jazz, swing and high-octane electronica meets influences from Gorillaz and Isolée to Fletcher Henderson and Mildred Bailey.

• Mike Heron & The Trembling Bells and Hapton Crags

Thu 24 January, 7:30pm

£14

Mitchell Theatre

For devotees as diverse as Robert Plant and Rowan Williams, The Incredible String Band remain the ultimate musical embodiment of 1960s psychedelia, whose legendary history and pioneering sounds have recently inspired a new generation of alternative folk artists. Co-founder Mike Heron teams up here with arguably the most inventive and exciting of those 21st-century heirs, Glasgow’s own Trembling Bells, performing new arrangements of ISB classics along with other anthems of the era.

Having caught the ear of Creeping Bent Records’ Douglas MacIntyre, Hapton Crags are soon to release their debut album, a murder-ballad cycle centred on rural south Lanarkshire, infused by such classic influences as Bert Jansch, Dick Gaughan and Davy Graham.

• Ahlberg, Ek & Roswall and Support

Thu 24 January, 8:00pm

£13

Tron Theatre

Putting a vivacious new spin on Swedish traditional music, Emma Ahlberg (fiddle), Daniel Ek (guitar) and Niklas Roswall (nyckelharpa), recently released their sparkling debut album Vintern, interweaving regional idioms from opposite ends of the country with a few of their own finely-crafted tunes, further enlivened by dashes of rock, blues and classical influence.

• DÁN featuring Guidewires, KAN, Breton Quartet & Alyth McCormack

Thu 24 January, 8:00pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

Uniting the talents of 14 top contemporary Celtic musicians - acclaimed bands Kan and Guidewires, Gaelic singer Alyth McCormack and the all-star Breton quartet of Jacques Pellen, Janick Martin, Etienne Callac and Geoffroy Tamisier - Dán is an ambitious, sea-themed collaboration seeking to rekindle ancient links and forge new ones between the kindred cultures involved. In tonight’s UK première, timeless traditional tunes and inspired improvisational passages interweave seamlessly in amongst freshly-penned compositions from Irish poet Theo Dorgan.

• Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares and Support

Thu 24 January, 8:00pm

£20

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

State interference with folk music rarely ends well, but having originated in the forced marriage of a 1000-year-old vocal tradition to Soviet cultural ideals, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares - formerly the Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir, founded in 1952 - stand as a shining serendipitous exception. Their magnificent, otherworldly soundscapes of dissonant diaphonic harmonies helped kick-start the whole world music movement 25 years ago, and remain just as thrilling today.

• Heart of Dingle

Fri 25 January, 7:30pm

£13

Mitchell Theatre

The rich local traditions and beautiful landscapes of the Dingle peninsula, in Ireland’s County Kerry, have long been a magnet for musicians. It was through this inspirational meeting-place that Edinburgh fiddler and composer Marie Fielding’s latest project An Trá (The Beach) came about, a sharing of styles and repertoire between Scottish and Irish musicians including several specially-written tunes, and an extended suite composed by Fielding. Tonight’s star-studded performance also features guitarist Donogh Hennessy, bassist Trevor Hutchison, singer Pauline Scanlon, accordionist Tom Orr, pianist Gordon Midler, singer and multi-instrumentalist Méabh Begley, fiddler Jeremy Spencer and accordionist Damien Mullane.

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• The Big Burns Night featuring Breabach, Blazin’ Fiddles, Dougie MacLean and Kathleen MacInnes

Fri 25 January, 7:30pm

£23, £20

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

Not that Celtic Connections has lacked for Burns festivities in the past, but this year we’re making an extra big splash for his birthday, thanks to support from EventScotland and Scotland’s Winter Festivals. Hosting the party here, at one of four shows in Rabbie’s honour tonight, are the brilliant young traditional band Breabach, who’ll be joined by a stellar selection of fellow Scottish artists - plus the odd surprise international guest - performing new arrangements of Burns songs and melodies. As well as Breabach’s own Ewan Robertson and Megan Henderson, featured singers include the great Dougie MacLean OBE and Kathleen MacInnes - the latter highlighting the Gaelic melodies to which Burns often set his words - while Blazin’ Fiddles contribute more of the Bard’s favourite tunes, as well as string accompaniment to the songs.

• JD McPherson and Support

Fri 25 January, 7:30pm

£14.50

Oran Mor

While making raw, visceral, booty-shaking rockabilly and rhythm’n’blues music, with its heart firmly in the 1950s, Oklahoma native JD McPherson’s deceptively sophisticated songwriting adds a smart contemporary spin to the mix, weaving in allusions and samples as diverse as the Smiths, Stiff Little Fingers and Wu-Tang Clan. Following a major online buzz, his self-released debut album Signs and Signifiers was reissued by Rounder in 2012.

• The Be Good Tanyas and Sara Watkins

Sat 26 January, 7:30pm

£16

City Halls, Grand Hall

Bewitching Canadian trio The Be Good Tanyas recently announced their return, following a four-year hiatus, with A Collection (2000-2012) - drawing on their three previous albums alongside two new numbers. Timelessness, in any case, has always been the essence of the Tanyas’ uncanny, slow-burn vocal chemistry and handcrafted arrangements, adorning a seamless repertoire of traditional, contemporary and original material.

After two years fronting her own band and touring with the Decemberists, ex-Nickel Creek singer/fiddler Sara Watkins’s second solo album, 2012’s Sun Midnight Sun, surprised as well as delighted critics its assertive stylistic range, taking in souped-up classic pop, grungy rockouts and gritty electronic textures.

• Maggie MacInnes presents The Life and Songs of Flora MacNeil

Sat 26 January, 7:30pm

£14

Mitchell Theatre

The heiress to a priceless family legacy of songs, absorbed at croft-house ceilidhs as a child on Barra, the great Gaelic singer Flora MacNeil was a veritable revelation for lowland, urban listeners at Hamish Henderson’s landmark Edinburgh People’s Festival Ceilidh in 1951. Tonight’s account of her remarkable life-story, which has subsequently included performances on the world’s most illustrious stages, is hosted by her daughter, singer and clarsair Maggie MacInnes, and features some of her most iconic songs, performed by the Boys of the Lough, Karen Matheson, Ireland’s Peadar Ó Riada and the Cúil Aodha choir, among other special guests - none more special, of course, than the lady herself.

• Duncan Chisholm’s Strathglass Suite and Pride of New York

Sat 26 January, 8:00pm

£16

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

Six years in the making, Highland fiddler Duncan Chisholm’s Strathglass Suite is a multi-dimensional musical map of, and meditation on, his ancestral clan landscapes, drawn from his hugely acclaimed solo albums Farrar, Canaich and Affric. He performs here with Matheu Watson, Allan Henderson, Jarlath Henderson, Ross Hamilton, Martin O’Neill and a 20-piece orchestral ensemble, featuring arrangements by Scottish Opera’s Stephen Adam.

With parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx sometimes counted among Ireland’s westernmost counties, the Pride of New York quartet - Joanie Madden (flutes/whistles), Billy McComiskey (accordion), Brian Conway (fiddle) and Brendan Dolan(keyboards) - distil several generations of traditional talent, laced with their very own Big Apple spirit.

• new voices: Rona Wilkie

Sun 27 January, 1:00pm

£11

Mitchell Theatre

With a fortnight left as reigning BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year - and having opened the Danny Kyle Open Stage just a couple of days back, as one of its 2012 winners - fiddler and Gaelic singer Rona Wilkie kicks off another exciting year with Ceangailte (Connected), an exploration of her own native Highland roots and international influences. Also featuring Marit Fält (octave mandolin), Patsy Reid (fiddle/viola/vocals), Rachel Newton (clarsach/vocals), Hayden Powell (trumpet), Colin Nicolson (accordion) and Allan MacDonald Jr (pipes/percussion/vocals), the piece is subtly informed by Wilkie’s extensive classical experience, seeking to trace patterns and parallels within her own and the Highlands’ history.

• The Sahara Soul Project

Sun 27 January, 7:30pm

£20

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

One of Africa’s richest musical heartlands, Mali today is sorely afflicted by internal conflict, an ongoing state of adversity from which this defiantly inspiring collaboration, uniting artists from three of Mali’s different musical cultures, arose to demonstrate their shared homeland’s strength, diversity, and its music’s power to bring people together. With his band Ngoni Ba, Bassekou Kouyaté is a modern-day pioneer of the ngoni, the banjo’s forebear instrument, boldly exploring new creative realms from his Fula tribal roots in southern Mali. From the country’s opposite end, young Tuareg outfit Tamishek have been hailed as worthy successors to Tinariwen, delivering a hypnotic blend of desert blues, dub beats and psychedelic rock, while the griot-descended Sidi Touré, from the currently beleaguered ancient northern city of Gao, interweaves old and new songs in the Songhai folk tradition.

• Hardanger Fiddle Journeys

Sun 27 January, 7:30pm

£13

St Andrew’s in the Square

As one of the few Scottish fiddlers not only to have mastered Norway’s national Hardanger instrument, with its doubled strings and shimmering swathes of resonance, but to have taken it into new realms of improvisational creativity, Sarah-Jane Summers is ideally placed to curate this programme illuminating its myriad contemporary capabilities. On the bill are top traditional exponent Håkon Høgemo, Irish fiddle adventurer Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and the experimental duo of Nils Økland and Sigbjørn Apeland, plus Summers’s own new Norwegian-based trio with guitarist Juhani Silvola and double bassist Morten Kvam, interweaving strands of Celtic, Nordic and free-jazz influence.

• Paul Brady with Heidi Talbot

Sun 27 January, 8:00pm

£16

City Halls Old Fruitmarket

Irish singer-songwriter Paul Brady’s recent anthology Dancer in the Fire, featuring 22 favourite tracks from his 45-year back catalogue, once again reaffirmed the distinctively sophisticated songcraft and adventurous stylistic range that have hallmarked his solo career, and seen his songs covered by other leading artists as diverse as Tina Turner, Bonnie Raitt, Santana, Art Garfunkel and even Cliff Richard. “Brady has enjoyed a pivotal role in Irish music history.” (Hot Press)

Tonight also launches the much-anticipated new album from Kildare-born Heidi Talbot. Building on international acclaim for her enthralling voice and singular interpretative finesse, the all-original Angels Without Wings announces her as an equally gifted songwriter, accompanied here by John McCusker, Ian Carr, Ewan Vernal, Phil Cunningham, Julie Fowlis and Louis Abbott.

• Nic Jones Trio and Support

Mon 28 January, 7:30pm

£15

City Halls, Grand Hall

Any understandable aura of misty-eyed solemnity around Nic Jones’s recent return to performing - some three decades on from the car crash that brutally curtailed his blossoming career - has been buoyantly dispelled each time by the life-loving English folk legend himself. He’d far rather get on with the music, here in cahoots with son Joseph on guitar and Belinda O’Hooley on piano and accordion, than dwell on his inspirational influence over successive generations - but probably best bring tissues, nonetheless.

• Steve Cropper & The Animals plus guests

Mon 28 January, 7:30pm

£20

O2 ABC

It was back in 1964 that The Animals became only the second British invaders after the Beatles to top the US charts, with - of course - ‘House of the Rising Sun’ (originally an Alan Lomax find, for the folk genealogists among you). Featuring founder member John Steel and veteran stalwart Mick Gallagher, The Animals remain famed for their hard-rocking rhythm’n’blues shows, joined tonight by iconic guitarist Steve Cropper: Stax Records lynchpin, Booker T. & the MGs co-founder, and all-round living legend of American soul.

• Aimee Mann and Amelia Curran

Wed 30 January, 7:30pm

£16

O2 ABC

In 2013, Aimee Mann celebrates 20 years since her first solo release Whatever. Last year her eighth studio album Charmer once again foregrounded all the qualities that underpin her music’s enduring potency: an unflinching fascination with human dysfunction, contradiction and frailty, together with trenchant lyrical economy and sophisticated pop savvy, the last fuelling Charmer’s delicious tension between gimlet-eyed insight and glossy 1980s-style polish.

Once likened by Canada’s National Post to “Leonard Cohen being channelled in a dusty saloon by Patsy Cline”, Newfoundland singer-songwriter Amelia Curran has followed up her Juno Award-winning Hunter, Hunter album in stunning style, with 2012’s intimately personal yet probingly philosophical Spectators.

• Robin & Bina Williamson and Support

Wed 30 January, 8:00pm

£14

Tron Theatre

Firmly enshrined in legend as co-founder of Scotland’s Incredible String Band, Robin Williamson - Honorary Chief Bard of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - has also championed the revival of traditional storytelling since the 1980s. His East African-born, British Asian wife Bina is another gifted singer and instrumentalist, partnering Robin’s harp on psaltery, autoharp and percussion, in a bewitching blend of Indian, Celtic and British folk influences.

• Sam Carter and Support

Thu 31 January, 8:00pm

£13

Tron Theatre

Since winning the Horizon prize for best newcomer at 2010’s Radio 2 Folk Awards, Midlands-born singer-songwriter and guitarist Sam Carter has been in demand everywhere from Richard Thompson’s Meltdown to the Middle East - the latter as part of British/Arabic collaboration Shifting Sands, performed at Celtic Connections 2011. On his second album, 2012’s The No Testament, Carter adapts US devotional traditions - gospel, spirituals, shape-note singing - into his own movingly prayerful though secular hymns.

• Heritage Blues Orchestra and Lucy Ward

Thu 31 January, 9:00pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

An all-star sextet drawing on the full panoply of American blues, from African-derived field hollers to New Orleans razzamatazz; soul and gospel fervour to fiery jazz workouts, the Heritage Blues Orchestra simultaneously celebrate this fertile history and refashion the genre anew. Their 2012 debut album, And Still I Rise, has already been hailed as a contemporary classic. “Old blues material given a serious jolt of modernist energy, without sacrificing any of the original character.” (Independent)

Derby-born Lucy Ward’s 2011 debut album Adelphi Has to Fly attracted widespread praise for her maturity as both a singer and songwriter. A fruitful fascination with the folk tradition’s darker dimensions also belies her tender years, though she’s equally adept at tempering the mood with a bawdy ballad or playful banter. “A major talent on the rise.” (AllMusic)

• Transatlantic Sessions

Fri 1 February, 7:30pm

£29, £26

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

It’s been something of a landmark year for the Transatlantic Sessions, which followed up its longest sellout tour to date, around the UK and Ireland in early 2012, with its first ever performance in the US, a centrepiece of Celtic Connections’ showcase programme at September’s Ryder Cup in Chicago, heralding the contest’s coming to Scotland in 2014.

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter makes her Transatlantic Sessions debut following the release of her twelfth studio album, Ashes And Roses. Over the course of her career, Carpenter has won five Grammy Awards (with 15 nominations) and has sold over 13 million records.

Creator of a slow-seasoned, richly hybrid sound sometimes dubbed “new world blues”, singer and guitarist Eric Bibb was a natural choice for this year’s line-up, having collaborated on his 2012 release Deeper in the Well not only with the Transatlantic Sessions’ joint musical director Jerry Douglas, but another returning regular, multi-instrumentalist and all-round Southern roots authority Dirk Powell, in whose Louisiana studio Bibb’s album was recorded.

Also here from Stateside are Crooked Still vocalist Aoife O’Donovan, currently winning rapturous plaudits for her solo work, and multi-talented old-time virtuoso Bruce Molsky. Home-grown guests include the golden-voiced Teddy Thompson, who continues to carve out his own acclaimed style of highly literate, subversively catchy roots-pop, and bewitching Scottish folk singer and songwriter Emily Smith, whose latest album is due in 2013. Douglas’s co-director Aly Bain helms the customary all-star house band, also featuring Phil Cunningham, Danny Thompson, Russ Barenberg, Michael McGoldrick, John Doyle, John McCusker, James Mackintosh and Donald Shaw.

• Old Crow Medicine Show and Support

Fri 1 February, 7:30pm

£18

The Barrowland Ballroom

Uniting a deep shared passion for Southern US roots styles with the upfront attack of the street buskers they once were; all-acoustic old-time instruments with whip-smart original songwriting, the Old Crow Medicine Show make music to assuage most ills. After touring coast-to-coast by train with Mumford & Sons in 2011, on the historic Railroad Revival Tour, their 2012 fourth album Carry Me Back saw them bidding farewell to singer/guitarist Willie Watson and welcoming back original member Critter Fuqua, in a collection of rip-roaring hoedowns, string-band workouts and radiantly harmonised lyrics addressing topics from Hurricane Katrina to the Iraq war. “Their songwriting is equal to the great names in American music (think Cash and Nelson), their musicianship is without peer and their energy remains as tight as a drum.” (No Depression)

• RURA and Norrie MacIver Band

Fri 1 February, 7:30pm

£13

Oran Mor

Having bookended 2011 by winning a Danny Kyle Open Stage Award and the Up and Coming Artist of the Year title at the Scots Trad Music Awards, young Scottish five-piece Rura maintained the meteoric momentum in 2012 with their outstanding debut album Break It Up, matching muscular yet lyrical instrumentals with Adam Holmes’s haunting songcraft.

One of Scotland’s finest emerging singers and songwriters, in Gaelic and English, Mànran and Bodega frontman Norrie MacIver here launches his own band line-up. With his first solo album planned for 2013, he’s joined by Alec Dalglish (electric guitar), Alan Scobie (keyboards), Ross Saunders (bass), Scott MacKay (drums) and Megan Henderson (fiddle).

• Bellowhead with The Chair

Fri 1 February, 7:30pm

£16

O2 ABC

Five-time winners of Best Live Act in the Radio 2 Folk Awards; authors of the biggest-selling independently released traditional folk album of all time - 2010’s Hedonism - Bellowhead are a truly unstoppable, groundbreaking force in UK roots music. Hedonism’s triumphant 2012 follow-up Broadside, applying their uniquely uproarious treatment to a dozen iconic folk classics, ramps up the momentum yet further.

It’s been a long impatient wait, but it’ll doubtless be worth it as Orkney eight-piece powerhouse The Chair unleash their second album, displaying all the creative fruits of five years’ development as a band, plus all their legendary appetite for whipping up a crowd. • ‘A Bhanais Ghaidhealach’ The Highland Wedding

Fri 1 February, 7:30pm

£13

Mitchell Theatre

It’s becoming something of a tradition in itself for the Highlands-based musical creations commissioned annually by the Blas festival to be reprised at Celtic Connections, with Lewis-born Gaelic singer Margaret Stewart’s 2012 celebration of Highland nuptial customs, past and present, continuing this fruitful pattern. Also featuring Allan Henderson (fiddle/piano), Ingrid Henderson (clarsach/piano), Iain MacFarlane (fiddle/accordion) and Angus Nicolson (pipes/whistles), the songs and tunes include both traditional and modern material, together with Stewart’s first ever original compositions. Narrative links, visual projections and specially-shot film complement the music, thematically charting a courtship’s progress to its consummation.

• Salif Keita and Support

Fri 1 February, 9:30pm

£18

Old Fruitmarket

Known as “the golden voice of Africa”, Salif Keita emerged in the 1980s as one of world music’s first international stars, following an early apprenticeship with now-legendary Malian outfits Super Rail Band de Bamako and Les Ambassadeurs. Cross-fertilising his native griot traditions and other West African sounds with pop, jazz, Latin and Islamic influences, Keita’s music has evolved from largely electric, synth-based fusions to the soulfully rootsy, organic approach of his latest acclaimed album, 2010’s La Différence.

Tonight’s concert is lovingly dedicated to Jan Fairley: gifted journalist, tireless world music enthusiast and longtime friend of Celtic Connections, who died in June 2012.

• Karine Polwart and Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer - ‘Child Ballads’

Sat 2 February, 7:30pm

£15

City Halls, Grand Hall

From the Financial Times to the Sun, reviews of Karine Polwart’s fifth album Traces (2012) unanimously declared her one of today’s most incisive, articulate and exquisitely expressive singer-songwriters. Addressing subjects from Donald Trump to an elderly neighbour’s life-stor , Traces “plays like a book of short stories set to music, full of stunning nuances and depths” (BBC).

After rapturous acclaim for her remarkable folk-opera project Hadestown, and 2012’s stunning state-of-the-nation album Young Man in America, US singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell returns to Celtic Connections performing material from her latest, long-cherished project, a reinterpretation of classic Child ballads with Brooklyn-based collaborator Jefferson Hamer.

• Bruce Molsky with John Doyle

Sat 2 February, 7:30pm

£13

St Andrew’s in the Square

From his primary Appalachian roots, singer, fiddler and banjo ace Bruce Molsky takes music back to a time before fusion - to the pure, raw musical essences that make fusion possible. “The more cultures I discover,” he says, “the more I realize that folk music is the same thing everywhere - just spoken with different accents.” Few artists translate across cultures more fluently.

Long revered as one of today’s supreme folk guitarists, splicing powerfully propulsive yet quicksilver-nimble rhythms with uncanny harmonic sophistication, US-based Dubliner John Doyle has also won growing acclaim as a singer and songwriter, talents vividly foregrounded on his latest solo album Shadow and Light.

• The Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson Band and Support

Sat 2 February, 7:30pm

£13

Oran Mor

Fortuitously/accidentally formed at Celtic Connections 2012, following a double bill of the two frontline pipers’ trio line-ups, the Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson Band found themselves booked for several summer festivals almost before the post-session hangovers had faded. On their official Celtic Connections debut, Ainslie and Henderson’s pyrotechnic core chemistry is further fuelled by the talents of Ali Hutton, Duncan Lyall, Innes Watson and James Mackintosh.

• Bella Hardy and Vamm

Sat 2 February, 8:00pm

£13

Tron Theatre

Already rated among the UK’s most captivating young singers, Peak District native Bella Hardy won matching acclaim as a brilliantly imaginative songwriter with her 2011 album Songs Lost and Stolen, whose track ‘The Herring Girl’ won Best Original Song at the Radio 2 Folk Awards. Her new settings for traditional Derbyshire lyrics on 2012’s The Dark Peak and the White further underlined her exceptional melodic and interpretative gifts.

In their new trio format, Catriona Macdonald, Patsy Reid and Marit Fält - alias Vamm - create lush, dense yet delicate arrangements of bowed and plucked strings. “Exquisitely crafted and configured, replete with radiant harmonies and lightly-worn virtuosity.” (Scotsman)

• The Gathering and Ross Couper and Tom Oakes

Sat 2 February, 8:00pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

A resplendent example of local music attaining global calibre, the all-Orcadian line-up and repertoire of The Gathering, which premiered to rapturous acclaim at the 2011 Orkney Folk Festival - Event of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards - showcases several generations of the islands’ richly distinctive folk culture, from teenage rising stars to veteran moothie ace and storyteller Billy Jolly. Also among the 16-strong cast (and counting) are Kris Drever, award-winning fiddler Kristan Harvey, accordion legend Billy Peace and most of eight-man musical juggernaut The Chair, all brought together in superb style by musical director and fiddler Douglas Montgomery. A reprise performance in 2012 launched a live recording of that magical first show, while tonight Celtic Connections hosts its mainland premiere.

• New Voices: Sorren Maclean

Sun 3 February, 1:00pm

£11

Mitchell Theatre

The young Mull singer, songwriter and guitarist Sorren Maclean seems to have been popping up in and around Celtic Connections that long, it comes as something of a surprise that he’s still just 23. Over the last two years, too, he’s been busy writing, playing, recording and touring with the likes of Roddy Woomble, Mull Historical Society, Joy Dunlop and Finlay Wells, absorbing a wealth of collaborative experience that’s fed directly into Winter Stay Autumn, the collection of songs - plus a tune or two - he’ll be premiering today with Danny Grant (drums), Craig Ainslie (bass), Luciano Rossi (piano/guitar), Hannah Fisher (fiddle) and Seonaid Aitken (fiddle/piano).

• Transatlantic Sessions

Sun 3 February, 7:30pm

£29, £26

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium

• Carlos Núñez, Philip Pickett and Musicians of the Globe “Two Pipers Piping”

Sun 3 February, 7:30pm

£17

City Halls, Grand Hall

Galician piping superstar Carlos Núñez requires no introduction at Celtic Connections, but this latest in his career-long array of cross-genre collaborations is perhaps his most surprising yet. An ex-Albion Band member turned early music specialist, recorder virtuoso Philip Pickett founded his Musicians of the Globe ensemble in 1993, at the behest of the late Sam Wanamaker, to expand the ethos of Shakespeare’s resurrected Globe theatre into the musical realm, with a colourfully varied Elizabethan and Jacobean repertoire. Scottish and Irish tunes’ prominence in the 16th-century mix is the Celtic Connection behind this sparkling and fascinating performance, also featuring members of Núñez’s band.

• Little Feat and Support

Sun 3 February, 7:30pm

£22

O2 ABC

Originally formed in 1969 by two ex-Mothers of Invention - Frank Zappa’s backing band - Little Feat rank among rock’n’roll’s great survivors, as their Southern-fried gumbo of blues, funk, R&B, country and multi-guitar fireworks continue to delight a loyal army of fans, most recently on 2012’s Rooster Rag: “Sounds as fresh as myth-defining classics Dixie Chicken and Feats Don’t Fail Me Now” (Offbeat).

• Battlefield Band and Tom McConville

Sun 3 February, 7:30pm

£13

Mitchell Theatre

Recently saluted by the Guardian as “one of the great institutions of the Scottish music scene”, the Battlefield Band’s latest line-up continues to refresh the traditions to which, over the last 44 years, they’ve contributed so much. Newest recruit Ewen Henderson adds Gaelic material to a song mix already ranging from Burns to Otis Redding, meanwhile stoking the band’s ever-fiery instrumental dynamic.

Cited by Seth Lakeman as his greatest inspiration on fiddle, Newcastle’s Tom McConville - also a much-loved singer - is a longtime champion of England’s north-east tradition, equally renowned as one of the most consummate entertainers on the scene.

• Glen Hansard and The Lost Brothers

Sun 3 February, 8:00pm

£16

Old Fruitmarket

Dublin native Glen Hansard was last at Celtic Connections in 2010 as half of The Swell Season, alongside his Czech co-star - and joint Oscar-winner for Best Original Song - Markéta Irglová, from hit indie movie Once. Six yearson from the film’s unexpected success, Hansard’s debut solo album, 2012’s Rhythm and Repose, once again elevates lovelorn yearning to the highest of musical arts, with an eloquence and intensity matched by his compelling live performances.

It’s been a typically Irish odyssey for vocal/guitar duo The Lost Brothers, from their native Meath and Tyrone via Liverpool, Oregon, London, Sheffield and most recently Nashville, where they recorded new third album The Passing of the Night in Raconteur Brendan Benson’s studio, blending soulful Celtic lyricism with seasoned Americana chops and radiant harmony singing.