Brit Folk
The Watersons, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Kate Rusby, Jake Bugg, The Unthanks
Katie Spencer & Max Clilverd | Live Session
Raised in the East Yorkshire flatlands on the fringes of Hull, Katie Spencer’s landscape has always been that of open skies and widening rivers. It is this sense of space and movement that flows through her music. Her writing, and most notably her guitar playing, stems from a time when the steel-stringed instrument was truly finding its voice. Artists like Joni Mitchell, Michael Chapman and John Martyn weave into her sound. Katie absorbs these influences into her songwriting and with her distinctive deep vibrato and crystal-clear guitar style, she makes the music inimitably her own.
What Is Love was produced by Matt Ingram (Laura Marling, The Staves). Recorded in London’s Urchin Studios, it features prominent players Giacomo Smith (clarinet), Max Clilverd (pedal steel), Tom Mason (double bass) and Matt Ingram (drums, synth). The album evokes the spirit of Joni Mitchell’s finest later works, always honouring without emulating. Lyrically mature and at times pastoral, the album is melodically sophisticated and unflinchingly honest.
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
By Jim Gilchrist
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 [ . . . ]
Continue article at The Scotsman | Celtic Connections Website