Sounds to shout about

Artistic director Donald Shaw tells us his festival picks for this month's Celtic Connections.

PUNCH BROTHERS, featuring Chris Thile
Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow January 18, 9.30pm

"Chris Thile is a bluegrass sensation, certainly North America's, if not one of the world's, top mandolin players. He's coming for the UK premiere of his new band, Punch Brothers. I've seen Chris play before, and shared a tune with him at a couple of festivals, so when I heard he'd put this new band together, I thought I'd check them out. They're great. He borrows from a lot of Americana styles and his songs sound as though they're 400 years old."

VOICES OF THE WORLD
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow January 31, 7.30pm

"The idea behind this was to have a mixture of some of the more exotic traditional voices, so we have a choir called The Bulgarian Voices Angelite; a 30-piece women's choir who use amazing harmonies and overtones. The style of singing and harmony has probably been in Eastern Europe for 2,000 years. We also have an Italian choir called Coro delle Mondine di Novi, inspired by a group of mothers from during the Second World War, who used to sing in fields when working to keep their spirits high. They've come back together for an anniversary celebration and started a choir again and passed the songs on to their daughters. I think this will be one of the last times you'll hear them, because some of the women must be in their seventies."

CLASSIC ALBUM: Andy Irvine & Paul Brady
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow January 30, 7.30pm

"We have a strand called Classic Albums, where we ask artists to look back at an album they've made and re-create it for a live performance. Andy Irvine and Paul Brady have played a major part in the renaissance of folk music in Ireland over the past 30 to 40 years. This is a seminal album, made 25 years ago. It's very traditional Irish music and Brady went on to write for people like Tina Turner. They've both been to Celtic Connections before, but not together."

CLASSIC ALBUM: Lauren MacColl, 'When Leaves Fall'; with Maeve MacKinnon 'Don't Sing Lovesongs'

St Andrew's in the Square, Glasgow, January 18, 8pm

"This one is very indicative of the resurgent Scottish music scene. Two young musicians, Lauren MacColl and Maeve MacKinnon, are doing a double Classic Album. Lauren's an amazing fiddle player, and Maeve's a beautiful Gaelic singer. They're both in their early 20s, which shows how strong the current scene is. Three or four years ago, I was involved in a project called Harvest, which brought together 100 musicians from all the Feis groups around Scotland ('Feis' means festival in Gaelic). I was invited to write a few pieces for them, and that's when I first met Lauren – she would have only been about 17 at the time, but she was fantastic."

LA BANDA EUROPA
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, January 26, 8pm

"This is a massive concert with 35 musicians, a pan-European folk orchestra put together by an Edinburgh musician, Jim Sutherland. This is only the second time they'll have performed together. There are musicians from Scotland, Spain, France, Serbia, Belgium and Switzerland – I think there are about 10 different countries involved, and some really unusual instruments, like the nyckelharpa and hurdy gurdy. It's just a fantastic explosion of sound."

BAABA MAAL
Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, January 21, 7.30pm

"One concert I'm really looking forward to, which is a bit different from what Celtic Connections usually does, is Baaba Maal, probably one of the greatest Western African voices. He's coming in from Dakar in Senegal with his 15-piece band, so it's a pretty huge affair. I've spoken to some people who saw him at Womad in July, and they said it was the best thing they'd seen all year. He's got an incredible voice and energy."

SOUTHERN ROUTES featuring Dirk Powell Band and Christine Balfa & Balfa Toujours
Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, January 27, 8pm

"This is quite Cajun, but it also draws on the old-time roots music of Louisiana, North Carolina and Virginia. A lot of the music travelled from Scotland over there a couple of hundred years ago. Powell is bringing a Cajun band, Balfa Toujours, as well as his own outfit. He's written a lot of music for films, like O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Cold Mountain. I was working on a soundtrack for a film and he flew over from Louisiana for a couple of days to work on it. He was amazing, playing about 10 instruments and creating this great, old-time Americana sound with Appalachian and Cajun music."