Celtic Colours releases sixth volume of live recordings

Exciting young groups from Scotland and Cape Breton Island bookend this sixth volume of Celtic Colours Live, available just in time for Christmas gift-giving. Recorded at concerts during Celtic Colours 2018, Volume Sixfeatures an impressive collection of traditional and contemporary tunes and songs—-in English and Gaelic—-by performers from Scotland, Ireland, England, the United States, mainland Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton.

Celtic Colours Live – Volume Six opens with a rollicking number by Ùr: The Future of our Past who have become a regular on Celtic Colours stages since debuting at the Festival three years ago. This energetic medley of tunes gets your toes a-tapping and sets the tone for a musical journey around Cape Breton Island, from the opening concert of the Festival to the Grand Finale.

This collection of 13 performances features some particularly appropriate pairings and settings. Musical brothers-in-arms Dave Gunning and J.P. Cormier, who first met and played together more than 20 years ago, were recorded during the Friends and Family concert in Inverness. Natalie MacMaster is joined by long-time musical accomplice Mac Morin on piano as they run through some of Natalie’s parents’ favourite tunes at Close to the Floor: Alex and Minnie’s Legacy in Mabou. And Cape Breton Gaelic singer Mary Jane Lamond is teamed up with the students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Ùr at the Òrain: The Connecting Thread concert, beautifully illustrating the connections between the Scottish Highlands and the Gaelic song tradition of Cape Breton Island.

Scottish singer Karen Matheson and piano-player Donald Shaw, playing at Celtic Colours for the first time since 1997, enthrall the Saturday Night at the Savoy audience with their rendition of the traditional Gaelic song “A’Bhirlinn Bharraich”. Matheson’s compelling vocals lovingly interact with the brilliantly jazzy-folky arrangement of fiddle, saxophone, guitar, and piano.

Other Festival favourites included in the collection are the award-winning, and enduringly popular Scottish group, Blazin’ Fiddles; Cape Breton fiddler and dancer Mairi Rankin in a new duo with innovative cellist Eric Wright of the Juno Award-winning group The Fretless; and contemporary Scottish folk band Breabach paying tribute to John Morris Rankin with a lovely rendition of his tune “The Last March”, recorded on the John Morris Rankin stage at the Strathspey Performing Arts Centre in Mabou.

Back to back tracks by newcomers to Celtic Colours—a lively set of jigs by Socks in the Frying Pan and Ye Vagabonds’ arrangement of the popular traditional ballad “The Lowlands of Holland”—reveal some of the range of traditional Irish music, while another first-timer at the Festival, beloved British folk-singer Kate Rusby, adds her considerable voice to the mix with a sublime version of her song “Bitter Boy”.

The bagpipes feature prominently on two tracks, representing two more acts making their Festival debut. Pipers Ross Ainslie and Brìghde Chaimbeul, accompanied by Steven Byrnes, contribute a catchy set of tunes from the Shaped by Music concert in Belle Côte, and the Cape Breton University Pipe Band’s rousing opening set during the Big Ceilidh at the Big Fiddle completes this compilation in style.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jamie Foulds and produced by Declan O’Doherty, Celtic Colours Live – Volume Six is available now at celtic-colours.com. Celtic Colours 2019 is scheduled for October 11-19. Full lineup and schedule will be released third week in June with tickets going on sale in early July.