Capercaillie 40 year anniversary new album Reloved

Widely respected trailblazers of Celtic music, Capercaillie are credited with being the major force in bringing Gaelic music to the world stage and inspiring the great resurgence so evident today. From their homeland roots of Argyll in the highlands of Scotland, the band’s musical journey has seen them tour 30+ countries, sell over a million albums, perform in Rob Roy (1995) alongside Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange, and enter the pop charts with Coisich a Ruin - the first Gaelic single to reach the Top 40.

To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Capercaillie release a new album “Reloved” realising their dream of creating full symphonic arrangements for their music. Comprising material from their much loved repertoire it encapsulates the spirit of the band with strident waulkings songs from the Hebrides, hypnotic groove infused instrumentals and epic modern ballads and love songs.

Capercaillie is led by Donald Shaw and Karen Matheson and is one of Scotland’s most respected bands. The band draw on rich ballad traditions, as well as their fusion of folk and more contemporary influences., while also staying with more traditional arrangements and instruments. Their music has been used in films. 

This ground-breaking and genre-defying Scots band, celebrate their 40 years of success in music. With Karen Matheson’s pure and haunting Gaelic voice. While Donald Shaw is a highly regarded Scots composer and musician, as well as musical director of Celtic connections festival since 2004. His composing credits include Bafta nominated scores for TV and film. 

 

Shaw and Matheson from Oban are married   - they are a formidable team! - https://capercaillie.co.uk

National Trust for Scotland new Burns Archive upclose

 

Over 2,500 historic items from our internationally important collections at Robert Burns Birthplace Museum are now available to explore from anywhere in the world.

 

NTS have launched a new portal that gives unprecedented access to manuscripts, archives and artefacts, including over 1,000 items that are held in store for their long-term preservation and protection.

Thanks to funding from a member of our Patrons’ Club and the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA, anyone with an interest in Burns from across the world can now visit our website and engage with Burns artefacts as never before.

With the ability to zoom in on high-resolution images to see full details on manuscripts and objects that would usually be displayed behind glass, the online collection allows users to experience Burns up close and personal – from previously undisplayed handwritten manuscripts by Robert Burns, to sharing the recently acquired items from the Blavatnik Honresfield Library, alongside photographs, letters, objects and wider archival material.

The collection is organised under four categories:

• Burns the man
• Myths and folklore
• Relationships
• Memorialisation and legacy

Highlights include a fragment of one of only six known manuscripts of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ dating from 1793; Jean Armour’s wedding ring; a lock of Highland Mary’s hair; and Burns’s blue woollen initialled socks. There are also many manuscripts that have not previously been on display, including ‘Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots’, ‘On The Approach of Spring’, ‘Scots Wha Hae’ and an unbound, uncut copy of the Kilmarnock Edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

 

View the BURNS ARCHIVE ONLINE -

https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/launch-of-global-access-to-our-robert-burns-collection

 

Susie Hillhouse, Head of Collections at the National Trust for Scotland, said: ‘We are excited to be bringing our incredible Robert Burns Collection to people across the world through this online platform. This project, which has been in the works for over 12 months, will allow people to engage with items in the collections like never before. We’re currently only able to show a proportion of these items at our award-winning Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway. Now, anyone will be able to search the collections, and zoom in to tiny details and experience the full collection of over 2,500 items, 24/7, from anywhere in the world.’

 

B & W Celtic PHOTOS

Often photos work best in black and white. Except if there’s not enough contrast, or if colour is the main impact of an image - such as blossom, sunsets …..

 

The black and white image has a certain impact that colour doesn’t have. Many of theses B & W photos are among my favourites. Theses are some black and white images from this years Celtic Connections music festival Glasgow 2024. 

 Kim Carnie, Lindsay Lou and Joshua Burnside performed at the Transatlantic Sessions 2024.

Ode to Joy

 

Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ was written in 1823 - and took Beethoven 30 years to write. This year is its 200 anniversary. The last choral section was based on a Fredrich Schillers poem 1785. By then aged 55, Beethoven was deaf. 'We wanted to erase inequality.'    

 

Beethoven Ninth symphony premiered in Vienna – not only for the elites, but for all people. He cut ticket prices. The chorus rises, evoking revolution – that all people will be brothers. 

 

Amid calls for Reform in turbulent times of Revolutions. Burns A Mans a Man, or Tom Paine’s

The music has been a rallying cry for social reformers  - from Karl Marx, to Hitler to Stalin. 

 

"Ode to Joy" 

(literally "To the Joy") is an ode written in the summer of 1785 by German poet, playwright, and historian 

Fredrich Schiller and published the following year in Thalia. A slightly revised version appeared in 1808, changing two lines of the first and omitting the last stanza.

"Ode to Joy" is best known for its use by Ludwig van Beethoven in the final (fourth) movement of his Ninth symphony, completed in 1824 and premiered in Vienna. Beethoven’s text is not based entirely on Schiller's poem, and it introduces a few new sections. His tune (but not Schiller's words) was adopted as the Anthem by the council fo Europe.  of Europe in 1972 and subsequently by the EU.