Celtic Connections 2016: a taste of the festival

Celtic Connections, held in Glasgow in January each year, lights up Scotland’s winter with music from artists who connect to their heritage and carry that connection forward. This year artists from Africa, Mongolia, France, Canada, the United States, Ireland, and many other countries join musicians from all across Scotland for eighteen days of musical celebration, a celebration which includes concerts, master classes, talks, art exhibits, come and try workshops on a range of instruments, concerts for school children, late night sessions, the after hours festival club, live broadcasts and tapings of radio and television shows, concerts which feature rising stars...

Here is a bit of what things in Glasgow have looked like so far, The festival runs through 31 January.

At a concert by the Chieftains from Ireland, surprise guest Kris Kristofferson sang with Aylth McCormack. McCormack, who frequently collaborates with the Chieftains, is from Lewis in the Western Isles.

Brian Finnegan lent his talents on whistle to a concert with his musical friends Kathleen MacInnes, Dermot Byrne, and Mike Vass.

As part of the New Voices strand, with which Celtic Connections commissions new music, guitarist Ewan Robertson gave the world premier of his audio visual piece inspired by the Celtman triathalon and the landscapes and history the marathon’s route traverses in Scotland’s north.

Kyle Carey and Giilebride MacMillan offered sets of Gaelic Americana and Gaelic songs and then joined up to sing together at evening’s end.

Eddi Reader celebrated Burns night with a program in collaboration with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, in arrangements Rabbie himself would have found intriguing.

Photographs by Kerry Dexter. made with permission of the artists, the festival and the venues involved. Thank you for respecting copyright.

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Scotland, Americana, & inspiration: Kyle Carey

Songwriter and singer Kyle Carey has spent time in Scotland, in the west of Ireland, in the Appalachian mountains, on Cape Breton in Atlantic Canada, in New England. From all those places and experiences, she creates music she’s named Gaelic Americana.

You may hear the creative and thoughtful ways Carey puts tis into practice on her first album Monongah. She’s built an international touring career with this music. With a songwriting residency which allowed her time to create new songs and plan others, she’s on track to record her second album, which she intends to call North Star.

click on the album cover to hear samples of the music from Monongah

She has the songs for North Star in mind, and she has signed on fellow musician Seamus Egan (you’ve met him here along the music road before, in his work with Solas and with Cathie Ryan) as producer, and she has plans to do the recording itself during the Celtic Connections Festival, a circumstance that will allow her a natural way to draw on the talents of musicians who gather in Glasgow for this event.

What Carey is doing now is raising finds to do this. At this writing she has about two thirds of her goal amount pledged to her project. It is a Kickstarter project, which means, among other things, that unless she meets the full goal amount, she won’t receive any of it.

Were you thinking about getting the new album anyway? Pledging to order now through this campaign will help Kyle Carey make North Star happen. There are other amounts to pledge. Most come with rewards. The deadline is early November. Learn more about Kyle Carey’s project.

Whether or not it is the right time for you to join in financially, one thing you could do -- help get the word out about this recording project. Inviting people to read this article is one way to do that.

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more about Kyle Carey’s first album Appalachian and Celtic: Kyle Carey: Monongah
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-->If you'd like to help support 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.

Appalachian and Celtic: Kyle Carey: Monongah

The Isle of Skye in Scotland, the west coast of Ireland, the Appalachian mountains, New Hampshire, New York Sate, Cape Breton: Kyle Carey has spent time in all of these places, and one way or another, they all find ways into her music.

Carey’s album Monongah makes it clear she has been thinking about people, history, landscape, and what stories they may tell through time. The title track, for example, comes from the story of the men and the women and the children affected by a 1907 West Virginia mine disaster. Carey began thinking of this upon reading Appalachian writer Louise McNeill’s poem about the events of that time, and the song shows Carey’s gift for distilling emotion into a few brief words and a melody which helps make that essence clear.


McNeill’s poetry and the landscapes of the southern mountains come up again through the album. Carey has a voice well suited to this, with a warmth that invites the listener in and a sense of phrasing that hints that there is more to these stories beyond the verses that she sings. In Orange Blossom, Carey is thinking about that train which is the subject of a well known bluegrass tune, but her protagonist sees the journey on the train as an escape, a return, perhaps, to warmer places and times. John Hardy’s wife takes a look at things from the point of view of a woman who receives just a few passing words in other songs. What was she like, and what happened to her, Carey wondered, and came up with intriguing answers.

There’s a strong connection between Appalachia and the Celtic countries in Europe. That comes up on Monongah, too. Carey is well versed in Scottish Gaelic, and teaches it in fact. She’s spent time studying in Cape Breton in Atlantic Canada, and in Scotland. So it is natural for her to include these experiences in her work, which she does with the song Gaol ise gaol i, a love song she sings in Scottish Gaelic. From Cape Breton comes The Star above Rankin’s Point, a lighthouse keeper's lullabye of sorts which captures the sea swept feeling of life along the North Atlantic.

There a Cape Breton tinge to the playing on this collection as well, coming by way of Cape Breton native Rosie Mackenzie, who sits in on fiddle for several songs. Carey has invited a number of musical friends along on this journey, a journey she took to the west of Ireland to produce the recording with Donogh Hennessy, known for his work with Lunasa. From Ireland also Pauline Scanlon added harmony, and Trevor Hutchinson played bass. Among the others supporting Carey, from Ireland and New England, Aoife Clancy sang harmony as well, and from New York state John Kirk played banjo and mandolin.

It is Kyle Carey's poetic take on story, landscape, emotion, and language which center things here, though, and her engaging storyteller’s way of singing that opens the door to her stories. Gospel twined with Celtic notes, banjo leading into Scottish Gaelic, miner’s stories traveler's tales of loss, change, and recognition, Monongah is a varied journey, one worth the taking.


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Kyle Carey’s website
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-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, 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.