Day 15, Wed Scotland 2024

Our last night in Glasgow and we got to see Alan Stivell at the Mackintosh Queen’s Cross Church. It’s another new venue for us, so we’ll be taxiing outside the city for tonight’s show.

The weather which has been hard rain and blistering winds. Even the Glaswegians are talking ‘bout how bad it is.The rain beating against the window sounded as if someone was spraying them with pebbles.  We hunkered down and my feet were happy to get a break. Today is not our flight day, but IcelandAir issued a warning that some short layover flights today were at risk for bypassing Iceland and going straight through. Tomorrow is looking better and they will keep us up-to-date on that, a wait and see sort of moment for now.

We spent time starting to pack up and reviewing photos and thoughts for the blog. We were sharing our thoughts on all the musicians we’ve seen and wondering which would be considered a favorite. We agree it would be really hard to pick one.  All were great in their own way, different from each other, even though they all share the common heritage of being classified as Celtic music.

The concert was great. Alan was accompanied by a keyboard, synthesizer player, unfortunately I didn’t get his name. Alan was having his 80th birthday tour.  Yet another composer/band member still going strong and playing at this year’s Celtic Connections. 

 

His voice was strong and lovely, singing traditional Celtic Nation songs explaining how they connect with his native Brittany.  He played a number of songs from his Symphonie Celtique.  So a good number of some of my favorite tunes were played and sounded wonderful even without his usual backup orchestra and vocals.  When he finished, the crowd yelled for more and he obliged with two more long tunes. 

The setting in the Mackintosh Church was lovely. All the pews were filled and we had great seats right up front. My only complaint was the dark blue lighting.  It causes the performers to look rather ghoulish and wreaks havoc with the digital cameras and later the photo editing.  And small world it truly is,  as we ended up sitting next to the folks from the Carlos Nunez performance the night before.

 

A very friendly couple, Sonya and John who have a trad-music club down in Southampton England.  We got to talking before the show, they recognized us right away, possible because of my mask?  Paul mentioned how I captured a photo of the accordion toss in mid air. They asked if we would be willing to share it, as they are friends with its owner.  Apparently, the accordion had recently been repaired having fallen on some other outing.  We took our first Scottish bus ride with them back to town. They parted ways before us, we said our goodbyes and good lucks and we were on our own without a bus route map.  But, luckily for us our lovely bus driver took good care of us, helping to get us off at the right stop without riding in circles the rest of the night.

So this is it our last post from Scotland and Celtic Connections. Paul has gotten ideas on other possible world music festivals we can travel to in the coming years. There are a lot of them, in places that have always been on my list of places to visit. What has been particularly nice about Celtic Connections is the variety of styles a mix of old and new and non-traditional or what one might expect when one hears the phrase we’re going to a hear Celtic music in Scotland.  We hope our post might have got you searching YouTube or Spotify, Pandora or wherever you listen to music these days for some of the great music we enjoyed on this trip.

Next post will be coming from Iceland.

And, now to go along with some of our City Hall building photos promised for today, I have some more thoughts to share about the affluence of old Glasgow city and a bit about Paul’s comment on the city’s litter. 

I have a different opinion of how the state of dirt is in the city, as least in center city where we were staying.  It is a city, dirt and litter happens, but it’s not really all over the place like in some places we’ve visited.  In the city they have two types of lanes/alleys, there are walking lanes and there are service lanes.  So far all of the walking lanes we’ve been on are as clean as a city could expect.  The service lanes, where the restaurants store their empty kegs and restaurant waste for pick up, are hit or miss on cleanliness.  Some of that might be due to how the sanitary workers, do their pickups, or maybe something/one rooting around in there not picking up what spills out. Also, the wind carrying debris away jams it up against fences in vacant lots and tangles it up in the areas with undergrowth.  There are waste bins of all sorts along the city blocks and for the most part people use them.

Back to some more thoughts and images of architecture.

 

While we have enjoyed viewing the grand architecture of the city and bemoaned the passing of such fine details in modern, possibly considered more functional building styles, there is a dark and sad history which enabled the early city’s grandness of the past. A good deal of the wealth of the city came from the slave trade. Whether it be through the use of, or sale of humans, or building the ships that supported it, it is something the city acknowledges. 

On April 21 1846, Frederick Douglass gave one of many speeches that was sponsored by the Glasgow Emancipation Society at City Hall. Apparently he was one of many early Black anti-slavery campaigners to live and work in Scotland.

 

 

Until we get an image gallery set up, you’ll have to click on the photos below to get a better view of them.