julie fowlis with bagad kemper

Here's a lively bit of music for the new year -- and music you'll not have heard everywhere, at that. Julie Fowlis, who sings in Scots Gaelic, offers a tradtional song from her home in Scotland's far northwest, and she's backed not by her usual two acoustic musicians, but by a really big backing band, the Breton ensemble Bagad Kemper. They were playing at the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall.






there's more about Julie Fowlis here

Lau: Scots trad re invented

Scots trad at warp speed with a whole new energy....



Kris Drever, Martin Green, and Aidan O'Rourke bring different backgrounds to their collaboration (for more on that, there's an interview I did with the three of them in the current issue of the music magazine Dirty Linen). This four minute promo video includes some very interesting ways of getting their musical energy and connection on tape.

The Unusual Suspects

You’ve heard of big bands, you’ve heard of Celtic music -- but combining the concepts? That’s just what Corrina Hewat and David Milligan have done, with a changing cast of some of really talented Scottish players on fiddle, drums, pipes, whistles, flute...The band is known as The Unusual Suspects. Their first gig, at Celtic Connections in Glasgow in 2003, has been named one of the best gigs of all time by The Scotsman newspaper, and those who saw their gig this winter in Glasgow named it as possibly the best show of this year's edition of that internationally acclaimed gathering.

Hewat and Milligan compose for this ensemble too, and there’s a bit of their work in both clips here. That’s Hewat playing the harp in these clips, and Milligan on piano.

It’s a major undertaking, getting this many musicians together, making them all sound good, and financing tours and recordings. More about how and why they do all that at the band’s web site.

promo clip with loads of fiddles







from the YouTube notes on the second clip: The Unusual Suspects' "Lorient Suite" composed by Corrina Hewat & David Milligan for the 2007 Lorient Interceltique Festival. This part of the concert featured seven pipers - Calum McCrimmon, Donal Brown, Fraser Shaw and Mairearad Green along with Stuart Cassells, Willie Armstrong & Kevin Macdonald of the Red Hot Chili Pipers.

The rest of the band:
(L-R)Catriona Macdonald, Anna Massie, Eilidh Shaw, Alistair White, Jonny Hardie & Gavin Marwick (FIDDLES)
Brian McAlpine (ACCORDION)
Rick Taylor (TROMBONE)
Nigel Hitchcock (SAXOPHONE)
Ryan Quigley (TRUMPET)
Colin Steele (TRUMPET)
Conrad Ivitsky (BASS)
Alyn Cosker (DRUMS)
Donald Hay (PERCUSSION)
Ross Martin (GUITAR)
John Morran (BOUZOUKI)
Corrina Hewat (HARP)
David Milligan (PIANO)