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ACTIVE participation, not passive consumption. It's a defining feature of traditional music, a grassroots ethos that's enshrined in the informality of the session and the ceilidh. For its part, Celtic Connections has always promoted this joining-in principle - there are artist-led masterclasses and come-and-try workshops. But in recent years the festival has "joined in" on a wider and more ambitious level, through a growing commitment to commissioning music. Rather than simply creaming off and capitalising on the fruits of the ongoing folk revival, Celtic Connections has invested both money and muscle into feeding it.
No fewer than eight concerts in this year's programme feature brand-new or recently extended compositions by contemporary Scottish artists, all bar one initiated by Celtic Connections. Wednesday's opening extravaganza, as is now the custom, brings together the Celtic and classical spheres, this year in not one but two large- scale premieres. Duan Albanach (The Scottish Poem), by harpist and Ossian founder William Jackson, combines traditional instrumentalists and Gaelic vocals with a string ensemble; while the song-cycle Osprey, by singer and multi-instrumentalist Brian McNeill, incorporates fiddle, harp, pipes and chamber orchestra.
Another regular fixture, begun in 1998, is the New Voices series, in which three musicians each year are commissioned to write a concert-length piece for an ensemble of their choosing. Each is then invited back to "revisit" the work 12 months later, having had the chance to develop it further. This year's bill includes a new concerto, The Curve Of The Earth, written for virtuoso Scots fiddler Alasdair Fraser by Strathclyde University's Head of Applied Music, Mark Sheridan; and the young singer-harpist Corrina Hewat's Photons In Vapour, originally commissioned by the Highland Festival, featuring a six-piece folk/jazz ensemble and the Mull Ladies' Choir.
Individually and collectively, these projects are pushing back - or trampling - the conventional confines of folk or Celtic music. Equally, they are confidently asserting the right of age-old traditional forms to...