Music and literature collide at Celtic Connections 2026
This year’s Celtic Connections programme is full of projects bringing together writers and musicians. Jim Gilchrist speaks to some of those involved
Celtic Connections, Glasgow’s roots music juggernaut that has burgeoned over three decades from a modest folk event into Europe’s largest winter music festival, this year adds a further strand to its mammoth roster of folk, jazz, world and wider roots-based music, introducing commissions combining eminent Scottish writers with leading traditional musicians.
This 33rd iteration of the festival, boasting more than 300 events across some two-dozen venues across the city, will bring together poets, authors and musicians in a recently announced multi-year partnership until 2027 between the Glasgow festival and Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF).
It will headline with the world premiere of The Golden Road, a unique collaboration drawing its title from eminent historian William Dalrymple’s acclaimed history of “How Ancient India Transformed the World”.
This event, at the newly restored Citizens’ Theatre, highlights not only lit-music but east-meets-west connections as Dalrymple reads from and discusses his book, joined by India Alba, a unique Scots-Indian fusion band featuring two widely respected Indian musicians, violinist Sharat Chandra Srivastava, rooted in India’s venerable Senia Gharana tradition and Hindustani tabla player Gyan Singh, along with renowned piper Ross Ainslie. Their music homes in on certain similarities between Indian music, particularly from the area bordering the Himalayas, and Highland pipe repertoire, as well as their common use of drones. They’ll be joined by guests including eclectic cellist Su-a Lee and guitarists Graeme Stephen and Ali Hutton.
In the characterful setting of the Mackintosh Church, music meets muse as a Rhymes and Reels evening features an impressive trio of poet-musician partnerships. Two of them were initially commissioned by the Edinburgh International Book festival (EIBF) – one featuring former Makar – Scotland’s poet laureate – Jackie Kay with harpist Esther Swift and her ensemble of voices, harp and double bass, performing he harpist’s setting of Kay’s cycle The Heartstrings of Poetry.
A second Rhymes and Reels collaboration brings together another former Makar, Liz Lochhead, and Highland fiddler Duncan Chisholm – particularly renowned for his soulful treatment of slow airs, but also one of the few musicians who have performed at every single Celtic Connections. Recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2015, Lochhead is no stranger to performing alongside musicians, including saxophonist Steve Kettley and Dundee band the Hazey Janes and not least for her fondly remembered partnership, In Flagrant Delicht, with the late Michael Marra.
A further Rhymes and Reels commission sees readings in Gaelic and English from award-winning poet and novelist Angus Peter Campbell alongside his daughter, another renowned piper, Brighde Chaimbeul, on Scottish smallpipes. Campbell’s current novella, Donald and His Seven Cows, a quirky and at times serene meditation on past, present and future by his metaphysically-minded cowherd, has been attracting much praise, although for the Celtic Connections performance, he reckons he’ll probably stick to poetry, particularly from his forthcoming collection, Grian is Frasan – Sunshine and Showers – presenting short, if not quite haiku-like poems, at times perhaps reminiscent of Donald’s musings and his sense of regret for a vanished past.
“I have a sense of poetry as quite … I don’t know … perhaps didactic,” he says, “so a poem can be like a little sermon and there’s a moral that you take away from it. But I’ve been reading a lot of Japanese and Chinese poetry and Zen poetry, so [the poems in] this sequence I’ve written are just little moments of memory.”
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He may also include Duan, a timeless Hogmanay chant recited by guizers as they processed from house to house bearing tallow candles during his Uist childhood, and which he recently recorded on Brighde’s last album, Sunwise.
And the cadences of music can pre-figure those of poetry. “Music is music,” says Campbell, “but watching Brighde and other musicians, they’re all grounded in language and culture and song and poetry. The things that I’m trying to address are exactly the same.”
Jackie Kay, meanwhile, looking forward to her Rhymes and Reels gig, agrees that music can enhance an audience’s receptivity to the poetry: “I think poetry and music have a lot in common, because they’re both open to a lot of interpretation, so you’re going with your instincts. It’s all intuition and feeling and timing and rhythm and I think poetry can have a lovely conversation with music and that’s what we’re doing – having a blether between the harp and the voice.”
The former Makar is looking forward to renewing her collaboration with Swift, who in the past has arranged settings for such notable Kay poems as Darling and Fiere. The very title of The Heartstrings of Poetry, which combines song settings and recitations, first arranged by Swift for last year’s EIBF, suggests a poetic celebration but, says Kay, also touches the heart. “It realIy can be very moving. People were in tears at the Edinburgh one. We were quite overwhelmed by the audience response.”
Kay describes herself as “blown away” at the prospect of reappearing with Swift and also with her predecessor as Makar, Liz Lochhead. “I’ve performed with Liz for many years, but never when both of us have been doing something musical.
“Also because Celtic Connections is about making connections, it’s lovely to be making a different connection with poetry and music. To me our whole world would be better if we all made connections rather than divisions.”
The Golden Road is at the Citizens’ Theatre on 31 January; Rhymes and Reels is at the Mackintosh Church on 27 January. For the complete Celtic Connections programme, see www.celticconnections.com
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