Transatlantic Sessions
Transatlantic Sessions return for 2025, exploring and celebrating the rich musical traditions that connect Scotland, Ireland and the US. An annual ocal point of Celtic Connections, the exclusive line-up combines guest
singers and the celebrated house band, inviting them to interweave original material with age-old tunes and songs as they explore shared roots and find new common ground.
An array of guest singers from both sides of the Atlantic will be announced shortly.
The show's seasoned house band, guided as ever by Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas, features renowned Celtic and Americana roots musicians Phil Cunningham, John Doyle, Michael McGoldrick, Tatiana Hargreaves & Allison de Groot, John McCusker, Donald Shaw, James Mackintosh and Daniel Kimbro.
John Cooper Clarke shot to prominence in the 1970s as the original ‘people’s poet’.
Henry is a writer, poet, TV & Film producer, founder of the Manchester Poetry Festival (now the Literature festival) and co-founder of the Nottingham Poetry Festival.
Brian Bilston has been described as the Banksy of poetry and Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate; with over 200,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community.
Two poets from different planets crash land onto stages across the U.K and Ireland, making a poetic and comedic show greater than the sum of its parts....(never ask a lady the sum of her parts). Expect poems, puns, laughter and tales from these two brilliant wordsmiths.
Nigel Planer was an original member of the comedy groups at the centre of the ‘Alternative Comedy’ movement in the 1980s and starred in the seminal TV series The Young Ones, and The Comic Strip Presents.
Whether he’s opening for the Libertines or reciting Georgian ballads down your local, Luke Wright is adept at taking poetry places it doesn’t normally go.
Toria Garbutt is a spoken word artist from Knottingley - a former mining town in West Yorkshire