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Celtic Connections 2020 Auld Lang Syne Concert review and photos Pauline Keightley

What an excellent concert!

This concert had a fantastic line up of singers backed by the wonderful Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Of course a performance with much loved Burns songs, these singers and the orchestra was bound to be a winner and everyone was on top form.

Gaelic singer Karen Matheson began the concert with some of Burn’s most romantic songs: with her clear, expressive voice with backing from her band and the orchestra, they were wonderfu. She sang:  Bonnie Jean, Lassie in the Lint White Coat, Ca the Yowes.  Karen also performed a Donald Shaw composition, Let Me Wander.

Jarlath Henderson, piper and singer from Northern Ireland  impressed with one of my best loved Burns songs, Westlin Winds. He also performed one his own compositions and sang an excellent vocal on, Green Grow the Rashes O.

Eddi Reader was cheered onto the stage. She sang: Jamie Come Try Me, Red Red Rose, and Charlie is My Darling, backed by the orchestra. Shona Donaldson followed with a poignant rendition of Highland Widow’s Lament and the Slaves Lament, plus the more upbeat and rhythmic Rattlin Roarin Willie. 

For the grand finale Reader sang her passionate interpretation of Ae Fond Kiss. The concert finished with a glorious Auld Lang Syne with the audience on their feet.

I wondered what would it have meant to Burns to have his songs thrill audiences, in Glasgow, and all over the world,  all these years after he wrote them. I particularly enjoyed Westlin Winds, Slaves Lament, Rattlin Roarin, Green Grow the Rashes O and Ae Fond Kiss,

Burns was a great romantic poet and wrote some of the world’s greatest love songs -but contributed so much more. He cared deeply on many issues – the rights of man (and women), his love and caring of nature, keeping Scots traditions alive, song collecting, equality, freedom and democracy. He was passionate about his song collecting but he was also a radical and a reformer; his heroes from boyhood were freedom fighters. He also wrote one of the world’s best known and loved songs of equality – A Man’s a Man for a’ That, which is sung today all over Europe, Canada and beyond.

Review and Photos Pauline Keightley – www.pkimage.co.uk

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