Celtic Colours: Autumn & Music on Cape Breton

Celtic Colours: every autumn, the people of Cape Breton invite the world  to come share and celebrate community, hospitality, and music.

This autumn, 2026, Celtic Colours International Festival events take place 9 through 17 October. More than fifty concerts are on the schedule. Alongside those are more than two hundred community events, among them art exhibits, dances, nature walks,  community meals, farmers markets, and more

It's a great festival to experience in person. If you'll not be making it to Cape Breton this season though, there are ways you can see several of the concerts online. Schedule for that are not usually announced in advance, but...

What sort of music might you hear? 

Cape Breton has long been a crossroads of music and cultures with presences of First Nations Mi'Kmaq peoples and people who across the centuries arrived from Scotland, Ireland, France, New England in the US, other parts of Canada, and other parts of the world. All of these connections as well as landscapes of mountain, sea and river, have played into Cape Breton music itself across time. 

Some of it will be in Gaelic. This is Josie Duncan with excerpts from two traditonal tunes, from a Celtic Colours cocnert several eyars back, called The Future of Our Past.

At Celtic Colours, you can hear musicians who've taken the unique sounds of Cape Breton across the world, as well as those best know closer to home. This season these include Mary Jane Lamond, Dawn and Margie Beaton, Adam Young, Sons of Membertou,  Beolach, JP Cormier, Rose Morrison, Wendy MacIsaac, and Heather Rankin.

You will also hear artists from Scotland, Ireland, and other places where the music and traditions in Cape Breton originated.

This season you could hear Corrina Dawn and Dave Milligan, Kathleen MacInnes, and Alice Allen from Scotland, Laoise Kelly and Liz Doherty from Ireland,  and The Pine Tree Flyers and Liz Carroll from the US.

Musicians from other parts of Canada frequently take part in Celtic Colours as well. This season those include Lennie Gallant and Zak Cormier from Prince Edward Island, and  Daniel Lapp from British Columbia.

You've met some of these folk here and elsewhere in my writing. Others I've pointed you to along the way have played at Celtic Colours in past years, among them Cathie Ryan, Hanneke Cassel, Blazin' Fiddles, Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, and Julie Fowlis.

Quite a few names to take in, there. Even if you know just a few though, you'll know they are each creative artists who make music to a very high standard. Most concerts at Celtic Colour have several artists or groups on the bill, so you may find you will have opportunities to hear artists new to you as well as long time favorites. 

If you will be tuning in online, you can find the cocnerts (and the replays when available) through the Celtic Colours web site and at the festival's YouTube channel as well.

You may also enjoy exploring

A bit more of the sort of music you may hear at this season's Celtic Colours, in this story from the series I write at Wandering Educators called Music for Shifting Times

Highlights of community events at Celtic Colours, at Perceptive Travel

A bit about the group that will play the opening concert this year, The Unusual Suspects of Celtic Colours

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the work you find here at Music Road.

I Lift My Lamp: Jacqueline Schwab explores strands of American history and connection

Finland, Swede,n Poland, Romania, Ireland, Brazil, Cuba, an African American spiritual, an alphabet song from Yiddish tradition, a song about baseball...

Those countries and ideas are all part of what Jacqueline Schwab offers in her album I Lift My Lamp.

Schwab's instrument is the piano. It is her dstinctive touch, alongside her gift for improvising around a melody whiel retaining and honrting its heart that unite the diverse sources from which she draws her choices.

That, and her connection to the stories she tells. The subtitle of the album is Illuminations from Immigrant America.

That explains the rnage of her choices, whci include a lively jig from Ireland, a slow air from Scotland, that African American spiritial, a dance written by a composer from the Basque region of Spain after he ahd visited Cuba... there are stories told through this range, ideas of connection to culture, to joy in sharing the familair and explorong what may be new, and fidning ad valuing connection and difference among various cultures.

That explains too why you do not really need to know the origins of the music Schwab offers to enjoy listening. Melody and improvisation are the tolls he uses.

When you see Jacqueline Schwab in cocnert, if circumstmace and setting allow, she does enjoy telling the stories of the songs and of why she connects to them. With the album, she has provided a brief intrduction to the porject in the sleeve notesm and then enlisted folklorist Stephanie Smith to offer that backround for the individual songs and sets.

You have likely heard Jacquelien's piano playing, even if her name is not immediately familar to you.

Schwab grew up in a family with diverse backgrounds and in a city - Pittsburgh - of many different cultural communities. She was drawn into the music, and the dance, of the varied aspects of the city she encountered. Since thnen, she has leved on Cape Cod and in Boston, and traveled widely with ther music, adding to her experiences and stories.

She has been part of the soundtracks of many of the award winning documentatries of film maker Ken Burns, among them The Civil War, Lewis and Clark, Mark Twain, and Baseball. She has worked with other film malers too, and played with orchestras for broadcast.

As well as having her own concert career with a range of reertoire and working on projects with other artists, she also follows her long time interest in dance by playing for contra dance gathering at times, which is one of the ways she began her music career.

All of those experiences in to the music Jacqueline offers on I Lift My Lamp.

In the celebration of American hisotry, music is one way to discover connections and differences with interest and respect. On I Lift My Lamp, Jacqueline Schwab offers ways to do just that.

cover art for I Lift My Lamp is byAnna Shakeeva

You may also enjoy

Jacqueline Schwab's website

A song from Aoife Clancy for which Jacqueline is one of the muscians who join in

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Canada's Music: Two Rising Stars to Discover

Two Canadian musicians in their twenties who draw on Celtic tradition while bringing in their own interests and experiences…

Image by Stephen Cruickshank from Pixabay

Morgan Toney is a fiddler, singer, and songwriter. A member of Wagmatcook First Nation, he grew up singing traditional songs of the Mi’kmaq people, accompany himself on the drum. In his teens, Morgan took up the fiddle. He found two separate audiences for his music performances: one for traditional song, a different one for fiddle music. While he was at Cape Breton University studying music, he thought: what if I put the two together? What is I tried playing fiddle music with traditipnal song? He did that. It worked, for Morgan as a creator and performer, and for those who came to hear him, both First Nations audiences and other.

Morgan’s mother had often had Cape Breton music playing – Buddy MacMaster, Natalie MacMaster, Ashley MacIsaac, and others like those top class players. That’s the kind of fiddle music Morgan drew on when he began playing the fiddle and when he began connecting fiddle playing with Mi'kmaq song.

With his friend Keith Mullins, a multi intrumentalist and producer, he worked on tradtional songs and worked on writing his own as well. They created a music that they call Mi’kmaltic.

Morgan has won two Juno awards so far, and gaiend other recognitions for his ideas in music, and his ideas about connections among communites, Indigenous and beyond.

There's connection to Cape Breton in the life and music of Mary Frances, too. She grew up in Ontarion, though, where she was exposed to and learned Scottish, Irish, Cape Breton, and Ontario fiddle and and folk music.

That came naturally, you could say: her paretns are Natali MacMaster and Donnell Leahy, both award winninf fiddle players who make their livings with their music.

It hasn't been expected for the kids to perform or join their parents on stage while growing up, but they have-- because they wanted to. Donnell has made a sports analogy, saying that as in sports, with music you practice and you practice and then you want to get into the game. Performing on stage, for an audience, finding out what that's like, is getting into the game in music.

It's not expected that Natalie and Donnell's children (Mary Frances is the eldest of seven) will choose music as a profession. It's just part of their family life, and of their education.

Mary Frances, thought, has decided on music as her profession. She comes to that with that performing experience, more than six hundred show, she estimates, with her parents and a spart of the family band with ther sibings, esepecially at their Christmas season cocnerts. She also knows the ups and downs of touring, and has kad a good bit of expereince recording too.

Mary Frances used her time during the pandemic tp focus on writing music, and also learning about recording, as her parents decided to build a recording studio at their home so they could coninute their own work.

Mary Frances is grounded in the Cape Breton and Celtic music styles she knows well. She has also found other influences drawing her in especially Latin and jazz, and at time other strands that have crossed her path as she and her parents and siblings have traveled and met other styles of music.

Mary Frances has released one album thus far, of all original fiddle music.

You may als like to see

A story about Natalie and Donnell's album Canvas, which include two tunes written by Mary Frances and some of her playing as well

Another fiddle player whose work you will wante to know Hanneke Cassel That link take you to a story about an earlier album of Hanneke's, and here's a piece about a more recent one

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Fiddle Players: 3 to discover +bonus ideas

Fast paced dance tunes, quiet slow airs, thoughtful backing of singers, classical orchestras and string quartets, bluegrass bands and ceilidh bands: fiddle players show up in all these, other places too. Whatever your choice of style, spring and summer make especially good times to hear the fiddle. Many festivals are underway or upcoming.

In mid May each year World Fiddle Day is on the calendar, too, to remind about exploring the creativity to be found in the work of fiddlers. And violinists. It's the same instrument,

Ideas to get you started on that exploring, some players you may know and some artists who may be new to you.

Alasdair Fraser, from Scotland, began his career as a scientist. That career took him to California. One day, as he found himself writing out a fiddle tune when he was meant to be focusing on his science work, he realized what he really wanted was to play the fiddle, compose tunes, and share with others his joy in music.

These days, Alasdair does all those things, through a range of musical experiences and partnerships, and as founder and instructor at several top class fiddle camps..

One of his musical partnerships is with cellist Natalie Haas. They've appeared all over the world, and though they've recently announced that they will be working on individual projects going forward, they've made many fine albums still to be enjoyed.

There's a bit more to the the ongoing fiddle story for each of them too: Alasdair's son, Galen, plays in the duo San Miguel Fraser with his wife Maria San Miguel,. Natalie's sister, Brittany Haas, is part of the band Hawktail, and plays with other bluegrass and Americana groups and artists including the Punch Brothers, Crooked Still, and Carrie Newcomer.

Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh grew up in and Irish speaking area of Donegal in Ireland's northwest. Mairead learned fiddle early, and trained as a teacher, thinking that she and her husband, flute player Frankie Kennedy, would teach through the school years and in summers follow their love of playing music.

Call of music proved too strong though -- and also, they were really good at it.

Mairead on fiddle (she is a singer and composer too) and Frankie on flute formed the band Altan with several friends.

Band members came and went, Frankie took ill and passed on at a young age. Mairead, though, is still one of Ireland's top fiddle players and composers, leading the band Altan in sharing Donegal music across the world, and working on other projects, including String Sisters, T with the Maggies, and teaching lessons over the internet. Mairead's daughter Nia Byrne, herself a fine fiddle player, sometimes plays with Altan. >Hanneke Cassel is based in Massachusetts in the US. Her music is grounded in the sounds of Scotland (she's studied and taught there) and Cape Breton, with now and then hints of her US background and of other places she's traveled as well.

There are so many great fiddlers, from Ireland, Scotland, Cape Breton, the US who work in Celtic styles. If this sort of music is new to you, the work of the artists named above is a great place to started exploring. You will find more in the archives here, and I'll have more to share in future too

You might also enjoy learning about these players
John McCusker: Best of
Nicola Benedetti: Homecoming
Cape Breton Music: essentials for exploring

To support my work here at Music Road, here's a way to chip in at Papypal

I invite you to check out and subscribe to my newsletter at SubStack, Along the Music Road. Related but different stories about music the people who make it, and the places which inspire it.

Straw Against the Chill

Straw Against the chill: that is an image of winter, certainly, and perhaps, an idea of hope and future.

It is also the title Bob Franke chose for his story of winter an the Christmas season,

Kathy Mattea sings it here.

Among those who join her are her longtime musical collaborator Bill Cooley, and guest Joanie Madden of Cherish the ladies who adds whistles to the story Kathy sings.

Whether the Christmas is a season you celebrate or not, I think you will find ideas of human connection, of the quieter times of winter, and of the power of story and song as you listen.

May it be good companion to you through Advent, Christmas, and at the eyar’s turning.

You may also wish to see
Music for the peace of winter over at Wandering Educators, where this song is set in contect with others
A reflective winter song from Cara Dillon
About the album Calling Me Home from Kathy Mattea

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Advent: a song for reflection and a song for dancing

Advent.

It is a season of preparation, reflection, looking forward to Christmas and back at the year drawing to a close.

Perhaps Christmas and Advent are not of your faith or on your calendar of seasons.

Still it is a time of that invites reflection, that holds both solitude and connection.

Music is good companion to those different aspects of the season.

With that in mind, as Advent begins, a song for reflecting and a song for dancing, too.

The first day of Advent this year is also Saint Andrew;s Day. Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, so it seems only right to begin with a song from one of Scotland’s top musicians.

Emily Smith comes from Dumfries and Galloway in the southwest of Scotland. A few years back, she found herself snowed in at her home.

During that time she wrote Winter Song, which considers the quiet of that deep snow covered landscape and the passage of winter days and nights into the New Year.

Celebrating and being with others is a part fo the preparation and celebration of Advent too.

That’s something Suzy Bogguss and her husband Doug Crider took inot full account when they were writing the song Two Step Round the Christmas Tree. Whether or not Christmas is your holiday or not, whether there’s a Christmas tree about or not, if you know how to dance the two step well or never heard of it, you will be drawn into the lively spirit of the song. Likely you will find yourself joining in on the singing of it, and perhaps dancing as well.

Quiet reflection, lively dance steps: both are good ways to begin and to refresh spirits as Advent begins.

Thank you for being here.

If you’d like to support Music Road, you could chip in at PayPal. Thanks for considering, and note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.

Also...

If you enjoy what you are reading here, I've begun publishing a newsletter at Substack with more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it. Come visit and explore!

You might also like to see
Another song of the season, about preparation, and a cat
Music for Starry Winter Nights, at Wandering Educators
About One More Christmas, from Christine Albert and Chris Gage. RIP this Chritmas, Chris.

Celtic Colours and Catching Up

It has been a bit quiet here. With all the noise going on in the world perhaps that’s been needed.

Time for a bit of catching up though. I do have great music coming up to write about for you here and in other places.

Right now, though: if you are new here, welcome. If you are regular reader, thanks for sticking with me. Music Road turned nineteen this past summer.

First, you’ll want to know about great concnerts you can tune in to live this week (10-18 October) or watch on replas through 31 October.

These are happening at the Celtic Colours International Festival on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. Lots of Cape Bretoners, of course, and artists from Ireland, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the US, England, and many places across Canada also.

Next, a few greatest hits and stories you may have missed here at Music Road, followed by news of and several links to other related projects.

Spell Songs II: Let the Light In
Irish music, Irish landscape
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain
Music and Mystery: Carrie Newcomer

Over at Substack, I’ve begun a newsletter. It’s called Along the Music Road. Different or additional perspectives on artists you’ve met here and others you’ve yet to meet here, along with other related stories. There are subscriptions at no cost and paid ones if you’d care to support my work (hint: you can subscribe for as long or as short a term as you’d like) and you can also follow if you do not wish to subscribe.

Sunday Sessions: Traverse
Sunday Sessions: a song about hanging in through hard times
Songs of Protest, part 4: Onward

At Wandering Educators, I write a once a month (usually third Monday of the month, though this can vary slightly) series called Music for Shifting Times.

Music for Autumn's Connections, from an earlier autumn
The backstory of the series, along with links to all episodes, oldest first -- scroll all the way fown the page for the most recent

I’ve also several other sorts of stories in the archive at Wandering Educators, among them an interview with Rosanne Cash, a look at the story of Putumayp World Music, and a conversation with Scottish fiddle player and composer Sarah-Jane Summers.

At Perceptive Travel I write three stories a month, usually.
Travel as seen through music, history, and the arts, most often.

A preview story about this year’s Celtic Colours Festival
Passim: Music and History on Harvard Square
Glasgow in Six Statues
Northern Ireland: 4 Songs to Help You Understand

I hope you will enjoy exploring the archives here and learning about these others projects. Thank you for being here. Whether you are new to Music Raod or a long time reader, I invite you to stay tuned as explorations continue.

-->A way to support Music Road,
through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.

Another way to support: you could Thank you for considering these ways, or a paid subscription (free subs are available too if that’s what’s right for you) to my Substack newsletter as ways to keep explorations along the music road going.