Listening to Winter: Aine Minogue, Cara Dillon, Matt Heaton

Winter. It’s a time of gathering in, of reflection, a time for preparation and anticipation, a time for solitude and for community.

Music goes well with all these things.

Aine Minogue gathered musical friends to help with her new single, Winter, Fire, and Snow. The Tipperary born artist draws on her deep connection to the mystical aspects of Ireland, and of music, in her work. She has visited winter before in her work, in albums and dvds including Winter: A Meditation.. This, however is a new offering for this season, a song written by Brendan Graham. Minogue's instruments are harp and voice. Seamus Egan of Solas and Eugene Friesen of the Paul Winter Consort are among those who join Minogue on this mediation on the changes of winter.

Cara Dillon’s album Upon a Winter’s Night began with an idea that she and her husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman had to make a gift for their children. “As musicians and singers we thought it was important that our kids grow up knowing isn’t all about Santa,” Dillon told Belfast Live. When the couple first released the album, they booked a small Christmas tour – which has now become a well loved tradition, for their own family and for others. When people have spoken to Dillon after these shows many of them “have said it brings the magic back into Christmas a wee bit because it’s the more traditional reverent songs,” Dillon says. Those songs include O Come O Come Emmanuel, The Holly and the Ivy, The Darkest Midnight, and Infant Holy Infant Lowly.

On his recording Snow Day , Matt Heaton mixes songs that share the joy, the connection, and the fun of the holiday season, There are songs kids will enjoy and songs parents and other adults will like too. There’s a really good answer to that question of when you should say Happy Holidays, in the song with that name. Have you met The Sneak? Always good to know about during the holidays… There’s a song for Hanukkah, one that celebrates Christmas Movies, a funny and gentle lesson in Can’t Judge a Gift. There’s warmth and connection in Christmas Eve With You. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is around and so is Winter Wonderland. Original songs and traditional ones, Heaton has created a collection of music which should become a well loved part of the winter season.

You may also wish to see
Aine Minogue Winter Through a Musician’s Eyes
Cara Dillon Wanderer.
Matt and Shannon Heaton Another Fine Winter’s Night

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Ireland's Music: Cara Dillon: Wanderer

Cara Dillon comes from Dungiven, a small town in Country Derry in Northern Ireland. Growing up, there was music in her family, and in the town, That turned out to be Dillon’s calling. It has, over the years, taken her into a range of music experiences and also taken her across the world in the sharing of her music. It seems natural that her most recent album would be called Wanderer.

It is not the album Dillon and her musical partner and husband, Sam Lakeman, set out to make at this point in time. They were working on a different project, when, Dillon explains, songs from Derry, many she’s known since her early years, kept coming to her mind. She’d sing them while working about the house or preparing meals for the family at their home in the west country of England. “Sam would come through the door and say ‘What song is that? That’s a good song --let’s record it!’ ” Dillon says.

The couple decided to keep the production of the ten tracks stripped back and spare. There are a few guests -- Kris Drever, John Smith, Justin Adams, Niall Murphy, and Ben Nicholls-- tastefully deployed to enhance the feeling of space, landscape, and journey in the songs. Dillon sings with a storyteller’s grace; Lakeman’s piano and acoustic guitar work quietly to enhance the dialogue among melody, idea, and voice.

There are seven traditional songs, two Dillon/Lakeman originals, and a cover of Shaun Davey’s Dubdhara. In sharing the songs, Dillon and Lakeman create a fine balance between sadness in leaving and warmth of connection with well loved people and places. Derry, which is the big town for the region of Dillon’s homeplace, is very present both directly and indirectly in the songs.

“Derry has seen so much, it’s like the walls can speak,” Dillon says. “It’s one of those places that’s quite magical, when you start to read and hear about all that’s happened there, but the most wonderful thing is that people are so proud of their culture, because it’s been threatened for such a long time, so now there’s this lovely tradition where people have passed songs along with great passion.”

Some of those threats she alludes to were political; Derry is very near the border between the Republic of Ireland and the North, which long before official partition of the two countries was a flashpoint for strife. Derry was also a major emigration port for centuries. That’s not only in the distant past, either; Dillon’s mother told her a story from her own childhood about a relative who was emigrating and slipped quietly out the door unseen during his farewell party, and the sadness that came over the whole house when people understood that he had taken his leave. That story stayed with Dillon and is the basis for The Leaving Song.

The dew’s on the grass
We’ve finished the glass
The dawn’s on it’s way, now
But my son leaves today
God help me I pray
God help me i pray

Slip out the door, love
But don’t say goodbye
Just take one last look at this
Northwestern sky

“I’m a mother myself now,” Dillon says, “ and so I can imagine the pain they must have felt.”

That points to one of the gifts Dillon and Lakeman share through the songs on Wanderer, though: that sadness can be shared and hope can heal. You could hear The Tern and the Swallow as a lament, which in some ways it is. If you’re far from from your native land, especially if that land is Ireland, it may have you wanting to return right away. It is also, however, a song filled with acceptance and hope. So is the rather more upbeat song The Banks of the Foyle, which forsees a happy ending of a life in Derry for lovers separated for a time. Both Sides the Tweed is a classic song of wishing for freedom and reconciliation, which has often been recorded. Dillon and Lakeman put their own own stamp on it in the spare version they create, while remaining very true to the song.

“We always try to keep the song at the forefront of what we do, myself and Sam,” Dillon says, “because we both have such a great respect for the tradition. The way we describe it to each other at times is that it’s like finding a really beautiful gemstone and trying to find the right setting for it.”

They have done that for the songs that they have chosen for Wanderer. From the returning home of The Tern and the Swallow through to the setting out on a journey of Dubdhara, it is a journey well worth the taking with them. Explore The Wanderer more than once: each listen will reveal new facets of those gems and their settings.

Concert photographs made at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, with permission of the artists, the festival, and the venue.

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Music in times of change

In the midst of change and uncertainty, it’s often a good idea to take time for contemplation and reflection, time to find interior silence -- even when there may not be much in exterior circumstances to encourage that.

Music is a good gateway to silence. That can seem a paradox, but recall that creating music is as much about the notes as the space between them. It has been said that a painter paints on canvas, and a musician paints on silence.

With those ideas in mind, take a listen to these four pieces of music.

At times music without words -- tunes, in the Celtic music world -- invite this sort of reflection. Fiddle player and composer Hanneke Cassel draws on the traditions of Scotland and Cape Breton with hints of bluegrass, Americana, and occasional inflections to other places her travels have taken her. Take a listen to the Gretl in the Garden set, which you may find recorded on her album Trip to Walden Pond.

Songwriter Carrie Newcomer often looks to intersections of faith and the everyday to frame her stories. Hers is a clear eyed faith and a clear hearted look at living both in the moment and seeing threads of connection, grace, and spirit that pull through, now and then laced with humor too. In this song, Newcomer reminds that in times of uncertainty it is often wise to, as she says in the title of her song, Lean In Toward the Light. The song is recorded on her album The Beautiful Not Yet.

Music can be a gift of hope, whatever the circumstance. Cara Dillon knows this. Dillon comes from Northern Ireland and loves to perform and record music from the folk traditions of Ireland and Scotland. She recognizes ideas that connect across time and oceans, too. This song, Bright Morning Stars Arising, has engaged Dillon’s audiences from Ireland to Scotland to China. You may find it on her album A Thousand Hearts.

The members of the band Capercaillie have taken their music to Africa, the middle east, North America, and other points across the globe. Their base, and the heart of their music, is in their home in Scotland, however. You will hear references to Scotland in this song -- the poetry of Sorely Maclean, for instance. It is a piece that invites more than one listen for both melody and words, though, and connects with ideas of contemplation, reflection, and trust whatever place you may call home. Karen Matheson sings lead. The song and the album where you will find it are both called At the Heart of It All.

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Late Winter, Christmas, and Music

Late winter, leading up to Christmas, is a time that calls to flurries of activity and travel, preparation and celebration, even as it calls equally to reflection and quiet. Music, specifically of the season and otherwise, is always a good companion and a fine gateway to all these things. For a moment in the midst of hurry or for a longer time in the silence of night and morning, let the work of these musicians be you companion and guide.

Allow this music to renew your hope and peace and joy...

Wintersong, from New England based quartet Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem offers joy, sadness, reflection, exuberance, and good questions. All of this is framed in great harmony, fine lead singing, and top class playing on fiddle, bass, guitar, and percussion. There’s a lively treatment of Jesse Winchester’s Let’s Make a Baby King, a gospel infused spiritual from the African American tradition with Children Go Where I Send Thee. Christmas Bells finds guitarist Anand Nayak setting Longfellow’s words to a new, reflective melody. The four (Arbo on fiddle, Scott Kessel on percussion, Andrew Kinsey on bass, and Nayak on guitar; they all sing) interweave voices on a song Kinsey grew up with called Julian of Norwich. Arbo’s haunting lead well suits her original music framing words by Alfred Lord Tennyson in Ring Out Wild Bells. There’s a lifting of hope in the closing song, Singing in the Land. That’s just a hint of the music, which will make a fine companion for winter’s celebrations and questions.

The title of Heidi Talbot’s newest recording, Here We Go 1,2,3 suggests change. That is an idea that pulls through the songs, the ones she writes, and the ones she chooses from contemporary writers and from traditional sources. Talbot is Irish, living now in Scotland and married to fiddle player and composer John McCusker, who worked with her to produce this project. They’ve created a musical journey that references tradition and yet is contemporary. A clear eyed facing of shifting ground and a thread of resilience to learn from whatever comes are threads that pull through as well. These are stories, too, that leave any certain conclusion open to the hearer’s reflections. Talbot’s fine soprano and thoughtful phrasing illuminate these ideas in songs including the title track, Chelsea Piers, Song for Rose (will you remember me), and The Year That I Was Born.

...and if you happen to be looking for Christmas music, Talbot worked for some years with the band Cherish the Ladies. She is the voice on their fine seasonal album called On Christmas Night on songs including Silent NIght, The Holly and the Berry (all the women trade verses on this one), and The Castle of Dromore.

For her album Songs for Christmas, Emily Smith has chosen traditional and contemporary songs along with carols that have become favorites over the years as she done festive season concerts in her home region of Dumfries and Galloway in the southwest of Scotland. This year she’s expanded her holiday tour across Scotland, sharing such favorite carols as God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Silent Night along with the gentle contemporary piece Santa Will Find You, the American spiritual Heard from Heaven Today and the Scots song Christ Has My Hairt Aye. Her clear voice and thoughtful phrasing imbue the songs with holiday grace and make the collection work well together. Smith’s own songwriting shines too on Find Hope and on Winter Song.

This is Cara Dillon’s first year to offer a Christmas album. Her choices for the album, which is called Upon a Winter’s Night, are in keeping with the path she’s been following in her non seasonal work, With husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman, Dillon has created a seasonal outing that shares several original songs from the couple, a piece in Irish, a reach back in time to the twelfth century for the Wexford Carol and even further back for the Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Dillon, who grew up in Northern Ireland, infuses the songs with a haunting grace and touches of Celtic connection along the way.

Carrie Newcomer’s recording The Beautiful Not Yet is not filled with carols -- it is not a seasonal album -- but the ideas of connection, of questions, of thoughtful reflection, and of staying in touch across time and miles work well with the holiday season. New comer has a gorgeous alto voice on which to tell the stories in this collection of original songs, too. It is an album that works well across the seasons -- as indeed all the recordings here do. During the winter holidays you might find Lean in Toward the Light, The Season Of Mercy, Sanctuary, and The Slender Thread especially worth hearing.

Bringing us back to Advent and Christmas, Matt and Shannon Heaton offer Fine Winter’s Night, which moves from contemplating how the cold dark skies of winter connect to warmth inside our homes and lives, to lively jigs and reels, both original and from Irish tradition. There’s a vignette of a Christmas love story set in Victorian era winter, and a story about a cat and Christmas, too, along with thoughtful presentations of carols including O Little Own of Bethlehem and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. Shannon plays the flute, Matt plays the guitar, and they both sing, trading leads, joining in duets, and adding graceful harmonies as festive songs mix in with seasonal tunes.

Photograph at top by Jude Beck, other photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Music for a Winter’s Day at Wandering Educators
Scotland, Christmas, and Music at Journey to Scotland
Music for the Heart of Winter: Cathie Ryan here at Music Road
Cherish the Ladies: storytellers in song: Christmas here at Music Road

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Music, friendship, and the turning of the year

At the turning of the year, it is often a time for reflection, for thinking back and thinking forward. Though times may change and at times friends may come and go, still the value of friendship and the memories of times shared with good friends are keeping things.

Music to go along with thoughts on the subject of friendship:

As Eddi Reader points out in her introduction to this song, Robert Burns may be best known for his love songs. Burns wrote about quite a few subjects in his life though, and friendship is one. Take a listen to Eddi Reader with the lively song Willie Stewart, which she has recorded on her album Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns,

Whether for a short time or a long one, one thing that comes along with good friendship is parting and spending time apart. At times the mingled joy of realizing how much you love someone and sorrow at parting make that moment of leave taking the hardest part. That is captured in the song The Parting Glass. Cara Dillon songs it here. She has recorded it on her album Hill of Thieves and it also appears on the collection Celtic Cafe from Putumayo Music.

Carrie Newcomer explores another of the many aspects that friendship may take in her song The Gathering of Spirits recognizing that there is mystery in it as well as, perhaps as part of, love and lasting connection. One of my favorite lines is “... and we’ll take up where we left off when we all meet again.” Newcomer chose The Gathering of Spirits as the title of one of her albums, and the song also appears on Betty's Diner: The Best of Carrie Newcomer

To close this meditation on music and friendship I’ll send you back again to Eddi Reader and back again to Robert Burns, with a song that, among other things, connects people the world around at New Year’s time. Take a listen to Reader’s reflective take on the song, which she has recorded on Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns.

Photograph by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Emily Smith, Jamie McClennan, and Robert Burns
Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Celtic Cafe at Wandering Educators

If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Ireland's Music: Cara Dillon: A Thousand Hearts

Finding songs to record is, for Irish singer Cara Dillon, rather like a journey -- a journey through time and ideas, words and melody, through songs from the traditions of Ireland, contemporary song, and at times music she and her husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman write themselves. They have learned to take their time with things, with letting the music and the ideas take them on journeys, and find the best ways to put their own stamp on them as they share the music with their audiences.

As they were considering the songs that make up the collection they have gathered for A Thousand Hearts they were struck by by a thread of hearts and passion which run through the stories told. Not that the pieces are all romantic love songs -- there are those, but alongside them songs of longing, regret, choices, change, faith, mystery, love for land, emigration, and humor -- all things which encompass and are encompassed by love. So they came to the title A Thousand Hearts.

Dillon often crosses the borders of musical styles in her work, but it is to Irish tradition that she returns as the base for her understanding of and respect for music.

“I’m from a very small town in County Derry, in the northwest of Ireland,” Dillon says, “ and basically where I’m from music, traditional music, is a way of life. Everyone is encouraged from when they’re knee high to play an instrument and to sing. to learn the local songs of the town there, Dungiven, and the local history and the legends of the town.”

It was to memories of music she learned while growing up that Dillon and Lakeman returned for several pieces on the album. My Donald is one such: it is the story of a woman thinking of her man, who works on the sea following the whale. In Dillon’s introspective treatment, it seems as though the listener is hearing the woman’s tale directly -- set off by an instrumental bit at the end which both allows Dillon’s gifted backing musicians to show their chops and suggests thoughts of those stormy and distant seas the sailor might traversing.

The Shores of Lough Bran finds Dillon giving a thoughtful take on an emigration song, which in a way resonates with her choice of Shawn Colvin’s modern day song of another sort of leaving, a love affair which is, as you might gather from its title, going to end: Shotgun Down the Avalanche. Lough Bran is, in fact, a much more hopeful and upbeat song, which makes sense, but both speak of longing and change -- as does River Run, another contemporary piece written in memory of one who died at a young age. River Run, Dillon’s voice is backed by Lakeman alone on piano, offers a quiet meditation on grief and change done with just the right degree of understatement.

All of which may make the album sound a bit grim; it’s not, not at all. There are upbeat songs, for one thing: the cheery story and melody of Jacket So Blue, the wry humor of Eighteen Years Old are two.

Speaking of love, and hope, and hearts: two of the strongest songs on the album -- though all of them are keepers -- treat of these things in differing musical and lyrical ways, but yet the threads of love, hope, choice and change resonate through them as well. Bright Morning Star Arising, from Canadian musician Ruth Moody, suggests that idea of hope and change -- for the better, this time -- through both title and lyric, and Dillon has found that when she does it in concert, people in her audiences are singing along with the choruses. Taímse Im’ Choladh. which Dillon sings in Irish, is an aisling, a dream song, in which Ireland (or Scotland, the song is known there are well) appears in a dream in the person of a beautiful woman urging the dreamer to rise and help her.

Whatever the source of the song they are working on at the time, “we always try to keep the song at the forefront of what we do, myself and Sam,” Dillon says, “because we both have such a great respect for the tradition. The way we describe it to each other at times is like finding a really beautiful gemstone and trying to find the right setting for it, so that it’s the focus of everyone's attention. The setting is just as important for it to be seen. We work on the songs a lot, and sometimes people come up after the show and say, is that a traditional song, or a song that you’ve written? And to me, that’s quite a big compliment.”

Gorgeous voice, thoughtful phrasing, backing players who add their own gifts to the telling of the stories: with A Thousand Hearts Cara Dillon and Sam Lakeman have indeed met the challenges they set themselves. Take a listen; take more than one. Each song is a gem which reveals another facet as listenings unfold.

Photograph of Cara Dillon by Kerry Dexter, made at the Celtic Connections Festival with permission of the artist, the festival and the venue. Thank you for respecting copyright.

Note: When first written this album was available to order only from European sources, but it is now available trough Amazon in the US (Music Road is an Amazon affiliate -- this does not influence coverage) in both physical and digital formats. Most links in this story now take you to Amazon US; I've left one to Amazon UK in the next to last paragraph for the convenience of Europe based readers.

You may also wish to see
Ireland's music: Cara Dillon: Lass of Glenshee
Julie Fowlis: Every Story
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Ireland's music: Cara Dillon: Lass of Glenshee

Cara Dillon is from Dungiven in Northern Ireland, a town just near the Sperrins and just west of Derry. She has a fine new album out, A Thousand Hearts, about which there will be more here along the music road presently. Meanwhile, though, take a listen and a look at Dillon and friends perfoming a haunting take on The Lass of Glenshee at Fleadh Cheoil 2013 in Derry.

Dillon has recorded the song on her album Hill of Thieves.

You may also wish to see
Ireland's music: two voices in which you'll learn about a fine album from Cara's sister Mary
Celtic Connections 2013: Images
Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland

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From Northern Ireland: Cara Dillon: After the Morning

On her album
After the Morning Cara Dillon includes original material, covers of songs by Scotsman Dougie MacLean and American writers Pam Rose and Mary Ann Kennedy, and traditional songs. It was a bit of a change up for the singer, who had been associated most strongly with traditional folk material, and it is one she handled well, at times choosing sparse instrumental backing for her graceful light soprano voice, and at others bringing in fuller sounds of strings, and percussion and yet at other times backing from keyboards from her husband Sam Lakeman, who produced the album, and traditional musicians Cathal Hayden on fiddle and Mairtin O’Connor on accordion.

“We always try to keep the song at the forefront of what we do, myself and Sam,” Dillon says, “because we both have such a great respect for the tradition. The way we kind of describe it to each other at times is like finding a really beautiful gemstone and trying to find the right setting for it, so that it’s the focus of everyone's attention. The setting is just as important for it to be seen. We work on the songs a lot, and sometimes people come up after the show and say, is that a traditional song, or a song that you’ve written? And to me, that’s quite a big compliment.”.

Dillon grew up in Dungiven, in County Derry, Northern Ireland, where she knew traditional music as part of her daily life. “You know I think kids growing up now think folk music is a bit uncool, but for us then, it was just the done thing, and I loved it,” Dillon says. She’s not speaking of some far bygone days, either: she’s is in her mid thirties now. Dillon was good at the music, too, winning the All Ireland prize for singing in English when she was fourteen.

It is to Derry and Donegal that Dillon often returns for song ideas, both seeking songs from the the tradition and seeking inspiration for the songs she and Lakeman write and arrange. On After the Morning, Brockagh Braes and Bold Jamie are two from the area’s well of tradition. The Streets of Derry, on which folk rock star Paul Brady, a native of Derry, joins in, is another. The Snows They Melt the Soonest is another from the tradition as well, with just Lakeman’s piano thoughtfully backing Dillon’s voice. The original songs include the bittersweet love song Never in in a Million Years and a quiet, reflective tribute to Dillon’s father, October Winds.

Though Dillon tours internationally, she’s not quite as well known outside Europe as she is within it. After the Morning is a fine place to make her acquaintance.

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Music and hope: Derry

Memory and emotion have run high in Derry with the release of the Saville Report, the result of a twelve year investigation into the events of Bloody Sunday thirty eight years ago. People lay dead on the streets of Derry then, and it is one of the events which deepened the divisions and struggles across the political and personal landscapes of Ireland.

Music has always been a part of the conflict, and the grieving, and the reach for reconciliation. On his album Let the Circle Be Wide Tommy Sands has a song woven from the familiar calls of both sides of the conflict, another one that considers the changes war and anger can bring in a person, a song that asks questions about times for change, and several songs, including the title track, offering hope.






















Several years ago, the BBC did a series of programs in which they invited writers to create songs based on interviews with people involved in certain events and ways of life. Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland contains both songs and spoken word from people with varying perspectives on the events of the last forty years in the north of Ireland.

Cara Dillon had a chart hit with a song Tommy Sands wrote which puts the political struggles into the context everyday life, called There Were Roses.Here is a video of Cara Dillon singing There Were Roses live.

There are other songs of conflict, and of reconciliation, of history, and of hope across the north of Irealnd, among them Sean Tyrell’s The 12th Of July (Lament For The Children)
and Robbie O’Connell’s There Is Hope. When people sing together, there is the possibility of hope.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: patrick season: far from home
Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black
Derry: healing through the arts
and Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday

this is part of a Lonely Planet Blogsherpa carnival on favourite places, hosted by Anne-Sophie Redisch at
Sophie’s World

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Ireland, north and south

News of violence in the North of Ireland comes in these recent days. Things are in a better situation, politically, now than in the past, but killing and loss and grief are no ways to build a lasting peace. Tommy Sands, who is from Rostrevor in Down, wrote There Were Roses, which Cara Dillon, who is from Dungiven in Derry, sings in this video. They both got it right.



you may also want to see

ten songs
ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter
Tommy Sands: Let the Circle Be Wide
Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland
story about recent events in NI, from the Scotsman
a more hopeful story, from the Belfast Telegraph

ten songs

Recently I saw a discussion on another site : if you could only have ten songs to listen to, what would they be? and why?

My choices have to to with memories of place and landscape -- although not necessarily those named in the song -- with faith, and with journeys of one sort or another. Links are to places where you may preview excerpts of the songs if you’d like. I like the way these artists think, and I’d recommend exploring their work beyond the songs I’ve named here, too


Tish Hinojosa -- Amanecer
all my time in New Mexico. also, when I worked in public radio, in Florida, I used to use this as a signature sign on to my early morning weekend shows.
Seamus Begley -- The Kerry Hills -- the west of Ireland


Kathy Mattea -- You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive, from her album Coal, which is coming out in April.I spent some impressionable years living in Appalachia, and those landscapes and people never leave your mind
George Strait -- Amarillo by Morning Texas. rodeo, the road, and Texas...
Cathie Ryan -- The Farthest Wave Grief and loss, change, hope, faith, Ireland, America, and the seas between, journeys of the heart and grace in understatement
Cathie Ryan -- In My Tribe"In my tribe, music is blood memory."
Altan -- Ten Thousand Miles -- homecoming and leave taking, an American folksong by musicians from Donegal
Carrie Newcomer -- There Is a Tree what it's like, and what it is not like, to be called to be an artist and a creator
Cara Dillon -- There Were Roses the cost of politics, and the power of friendship and community


Caroline Herring -- Carolina Moon
" a Carolina Moon is rising in the Texas sky” and what more could you want, except love, bluegrass, and biscuits, all of which are in the song.

Now playing: Celtic Connections

In the midst of Celtic Connections, which maintains its moments of musical intimacy despite thousands of attendances, hundreds of performers, and venues scattered across the city center of Glasgow in rainy Scottish January. Maybe it’s that weather that helps draw people together: it’s time to go within and share music.

Highlights thus far include:
*Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas in absolutely inspired musical conversation at the City Halls at the end of an evening’s program which also included gigs from the Swedish group Oleman, who took us to back porch in Scandinavia, and the amazing guitarist Tony McManus with a many musical friends.

*Mary Ann Kennedy, James Graham, and Mick West in the intimate listening space above the Universal club, trading songs in Scots and Gaelic about emigration, and the audience joining in on many songs to everyone’s delight.

*The Rooney Family, Ryan Young, and The Laurels as new rising talent

*Brian Finnegan’s Singing Tree, an adventure into the music of Northern Ireland, old and new and future, with Cara Dillon, shown at left, Damien O’Kane, and others

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