Celtic Connections (gig #3)
Categories: glasgow, festivals
Tags: photos, Celtic Connections, concert, culture, Museum, Glasgow
Date: 23 January 2007 18:39:21
Last night saw us off to the Royal Concert Halls for our next Celtic Connections gig. This is such a treat! Amazingly the hall wasn't full - the circle wasn't used at all, and the stalls where we were were probably only 3/4 full. Oh well - the people who could have been in those empty seats missed a great night - a live performance of selected highlights from Radio 2's 2006 "Radio Ballads". The original Radio Ballads project, which took place in the 1950s/60s, was masterminded by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, and they went round recording hundreds of ordinary people talking about their lives and the things that were important to them, then collected them into themes and got lots of folk musicians to write new songs based on those main themes. Last year the project was repeated, and the Ballads were premiered on Radio 2 in December. Last night we heard a selection from all of the Ballad themes (including the second half which was most, if not all, of the theme relating to the decline of the UK shipbuilding industry, something of huge relevance to Glasgow of course) presented by the singer and creative director of the project, John Tams, and featuring (amongst others) Kate Rusby, John McCusker, John Fox, Karine Polwart, and Jez Lowe (they're just the ones whose names I remember - there were others too). Kate Rusby of course was fabulous - there's something about her voice which just makes me stop and listen, it's so pure. And my other favourite was Karine Polwart, who had written some of the songs as well as singing them. I have a CD of hers, but this is the first time I'd heard her live, and thought she was fantastic, I'll definitely have to see her again sometime (not this week sadly, as she clashes with something else we're going to). My dad would have loved this - I think one year we'll have to invite my folks up in January, as although he'd chunter a bit at all the non-trad stuff, there's enough going on that he'd be in his element.
Today we're not going to a concert, but we did go out today and do some culture, at the fabulous Glasgow Science Centre. I had particularly wanted to go up the Glasgow Tower, which we did - the first building in the world that is able - finally, after lots of technical hitches which saw it closed for ages and only reopened recently - to rotate 360 degrees in its entirety. After a brief talk on the technical wizardry (ie how it works - with remarkably little power, apparently it would only take 13 people to rotate it physically) we took the lift up to the top, and spent half an hour admiring the great view all over the city. Here are a couple of pics (out of lots more!) that I took, firstly looking down on the Science Centre itself (it's the shape of an upturned ship, as it was built on the part of the old dockyards where ships were taken to and upended in order to be cleaned), and secondly a view of the Kelvingrove Museum, University of Glasgow and the Campsie Fells in the background:
After that we went to the Science Centre itself and had a lot of fun playing with all the exhibits - it really is an exceptionally good place for that, all of the exhibits are interactive so we were able to be big kids for the day. It was ace! Not the cheapest attraction I've ever been to, but well worth the money if you have kids you want to occupy for a few hours in Glasgow.
Some people who haven't met us may want to know what we look like. So, hot off the press, here's HD:-
I think his head must be in his rucksack.
And this is me - 2 for the price of 1 :) :-
One of the exhibits was a two way mirror where you sit opposite each other and, depending on the light, you see the other person's features morph into yours (whilst not losing your own features). We tried it, but from where I was sitting I couldn't really see it very effectively. HD though looked a bit alarmed, and walked off muttering something about "that's what our kids will look like" in a way which suggested that might not be a good thing.