COME January and the post-festive gloom, Glasgow, in any normal year, comes alive with Europe’s biggest winter music festival. Every year Celtic Connections welcomes music lovers in their droves to its showcase of folk and roots music from throughout Scotland and the world. However, 2021, needless to say, is not a “normal” year. With coronavirus cases on the rise, and with mass immunisation a future promise rather than a present reality, the festival’s creative producer Donald Shaw and his team had to make the painful decision to shift their great live music programme online. They “left it as long as possible”, Shaw says, before finally conceding that a live festival wasn’t going to happen. It was in October, he explains, that they concluded that the Covid omens were not good.
Celtic Connections festival moves online - here is how you can get your ticket
An early bird festival pass has been released that gives unlimited access to the full 19 nights of entertainment for only £30.
Celtic Connections is going online this year. (Image: Celtic Connections)
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By Sean Smith, BostonIrish Contributor
December 28, 2020
Sean Smith, BostonIrish Contributor
While its focus tends to be on traditional and contemporary Scottish music, the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow also features music from Ireland and other countries.
With live music – as we know it, anyway – in stasis these past several months, many venues, organizations, and artists have turned to virtual formats for presenting performances, whether through livestreaming or pre-recorded concerts. That includes Irish/Celtic music, as witnessed by GBH’s 2020 “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn” and the annual BCMFest, which will take place January 14-18 [see story elsewhere on the Boston Irish site].