Celtic Connections

The Carrying Stream, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Rob Adams, Three Stars

Celtic Connections 2016 opened with a concert to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Traditional Music and Song Association, an organisation that works away, often under the mainstream media’s radar, to foster the riches that have been passed down the generations.

Among the beneficiaries of its nurturing is the young singer Siobhan Miller, who grew up attending TMSA events and who, as the concert’s musical director, invited a large cast of performers from near and further away and gave them a platform, sometimes to the accompaniment of a capable and discreet house band, sometimes communicating through the power of their voices.

If a toast had been raised before these two ninety-minute sets, it might have been “to absent friends.” Miller herself remembered the great Sheila Stewart, of the Blairgowrie-based traveller family, and the most recent loss, Andy M Stewart, a man who sang Scotland, its history, its geography, and its sense of humour. Kris Drever cited the eloquent Tony Cuffe. Londoner Sam Lee remembered the inestimable Jeanie Robertson through his learning of The Moon Shone on My Bed Last Night from her nephew Stanley. And Steve Byrne, of Malinky, honoured the memory and talent of his fellow Angus native, Jim Reid.

As compere Mark Stephen jollied the evening along, the character that these departed souls had given to the music was continued by performances including Adam McNaughtan’s typically rogue-ish reading of the Soor Mulk Cairt, by Fiona Hunter’s lovely, warm and involving singing of Term Time, and by Irish traveller Thomas McCarthy’s extraordinarily rich telling of the ballad of Lady Margaret.

Both sets opened with those trusted with carrying the music forward, the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland and Feis Ross’s Ceilidh Trail playing with talent and vigour, and moving towards the other end of the spectrum, TMSA stalwart Sheena Wellington reprised her Scottish Parliament reopening take on A Man’s a Man for a’ That, Aly Bain & Phil Cunningham added instrumental vim, and Brian Miller invoked the late Willie Scott in his recitation of the mirthful MacAllister Dances Before the King.