Celtic Connections
SLIGO LIVE SESSIONS, Ireland’s fastest growing music festival is to forge a partnership with Glasgow’s massive Celtic Connections Festival, the world’s largest roots music Winter Festival. The alliance will see the festivals cooperating on programming and marketing.
Initially, Celtic Connections will host a Sligo Live Sessions night each year and Celtic Connections will present a Scottish Programme in Sligo Live Sessions starting in 2011 and each will help to cement the strong cultural links and kinship between Scotland and Ireland. This partnership has significant cultural value not just for Sligo but for Ireland, and is an opportunity to promote Irish Artists and Scottish Artists to an international audience. This is the first time the 18 day event, which is held in January each year, has partnered any overseas event.
Last year the very first Sligo Live @ Celtic Connections featured Téada, The Unwanted and Túcan.
Sligo Live again curates a triple bill in 2012 at St Andrews in the Square. The pioneering accordionist Máirtín O’Connor is paired with guitarist, singer and fiddler Seamie O’Dowd, as heard on O’Connor’s 2005 album The Road West.
Aptly-named indie-popsters The Gorgeous Colours channel blues, folk, jazz, soul, rock, indie and electronic influences into “a perfect package of feelgood, danceable and all-round gorgeous sounds” (State.ie), while O’Connor himself has hailed young Sligo natives and Danny Kyle Award winners The JPTrio as “the new cutting edge of fused traditional music”.
To mark this unique partnership a symbolic Cultural Exchange Photocall took place with the members of the two festivals whereby Celtic Connections presented Sligo with a set of Scottish Bagpipes and Sligo Live Sessions presented Glasgow with a handmade Irish Bodhran.
View more images here.
More info here.
