Latest news with #Hoolie
The National
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Glasgow's Hoolie in the Hydro reveals tribute to Billy Connolly
Returning to the venue for the fourth year, The Hoolie in the Hydro will be taking place on Saturday, December 13 Celebrating the Big Yin's comedy and folk music, the night has a line-up of 'windswept and interesting' musicians ready to share their favourite songs. (Image: Newsquest)Forming the finale of the Hoolie, audiences can expect Glasgow and Scottish talent to perform their favourite of Connolly's songs, including I Wish I Was in Glasgow and Glasgow Central. The celebration marks 60 years since Connolly formed the three-piece folk band The Humblebums and coincides with Glasgow's 850th birthday celebrations. READ MORE: John Swinney calls for Kneecap to be cut from major Scottish festival The Hoolie's organiser, broadcaster and musician Gary Innes, collaborated with The Big Yin himself as well as the performer's family. Innes said: 'Billy Connolly is a true Glasgow and Scottish hero and his big personality, love for folk music and the joy of people coming together to have a great time, really made him the perfect inspiration for this year's Hoolie in the Hydro. (Image: Newsquest) 'It's 60 years since Billy formed the Humblebums and 2025 is Glasgow's 850th birthday – as one of the city's great success stories and most famous sons, we just had to tip our hat to the Big Yin.' Scottish fiddler Aly Bain is one of the performers already confirmed to be taking part in the tribute. Bain played alongside Connolly and is 'really looking forward to celebrating' his life and times. READ MORE: There is no sense of urgency from politicians for radical land reform He said: 'Billy and I started our careers on a motorbike with a sidecar, and things only got better from there. 'Since then, Billy and I have shared more than 50 years of friendship and countless great memories.' Elsewhere on the line-up, Elephant Sessions (below) will be making their OVO Hydro debut with their award-winning combination of trad, funk, and electronica. Six-piece ceilidh folk band Trail West will be returning to The Hoolie after performing at the inaugural 2022 event, coming off the back of two sold-out shows in the Barrowlands Ballroom. Supergroup Mànran will bring their traditional-modern combination of folk rock and mix of Gaelic and English songs back to Glasgow. Beluga Lagoon round off the so-far-announced acts for the Hoolie. The musical project of wildlife filmmaker and cameraman Andrew O'Donnell, Beluga Lagoon's music centres the beauty of the Scottish landscape. READ MORE: Tommy Sheppard: Scottish independence and trade unionism must work hand in hand Innes said: 'I'm also delighted to have some of the brightest names on the Scottish traditional music scene join the bill and showcase the energy, ambition and fun to be found on the folk scene today so come join us for a good bit of nonsense and the ultimate celebration of Glasgow.' Earlier this month, the concept travelled across the pond for the Hoolie in New York. Mànran, Julie Fowlis, Dougie MacLean and other Scottish stars took to the stage in one of the most prestigious music venues in the world, Carnegie Hall, for a night of traditional Scottish music. You can find tickets and further information about The Hoolie in the Hydro: The Big Yin here.
Daily Record
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Billy Connolly to be honoured at Glasgow Hydro in all-star concert
Billy Connolly's life is to be celebrated with an all-star concert at Glasgow's OVO Hydro. The show is being staged with the comedian's backing to mark 60 years since he first performed with folk act The Humblebums. December's Hoolie in The Hydro: The Big Yin concert will pay tribute to the 82-year old who was forced to retire in 2018 after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. Organiser Gary Innes, 44, said: 'When I approached Billy and his family last year about the idea, they were over the moon. 'It's been 60 years since Billy started The Humblebums and I'm absolutely delighted Billy himself and the family have given me the green light to honour and celebrate his life. 'The show will be full of special guests. There will be a big house band and lots of people who have played with Billy Connolly over the years and lots of people who have been inspired by Billy as well. 'Each year I try to do something special with the Hoolie to celebrate a band or achievement or somebody. We're talking to the biggest stars on the planet and people closer to home.' The Humblebums, who also featured Gerry 'Baker Street' Rafferty, were a key part of the Glasgow folk scene in the 1960s, regularly playing in the Scotia Bar. Billy's folk roots and beloved banjo remain close to his heart to this day. Award-winning fiddler Aly Bain, who performed briefly with the band, is taking part. He told the Record: 'Billy and I started our careers on a motorbike with a sidecar, and things only got better from there. 'Since then, Billy and I have shared over 50 years of friendship and countless great memories. 'He's a very special man and friend.' Billy worked as a welder in shipyards in Glasgow, before quitting to pursue his career in entertainment.
New York Times
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A 270-Year-Old Scottish Folk Fiddle Makes Its Carnegie Hall Debut
Of course there will be bagpipes on Saturday, the eve of Tartan Day, when Carnegie Hall will host a lineup of stars. Among the luminaries of Scottish traditional music will be Julie Fowlis, who was featured in the soundtrack to Disney's 'Brave'; and Dougie MacLean, the singer-songwriter whose 'Caledonia' has became an anthem for Scottish sports fans. The event, 'Scotland's Hoolie in New York,' will also be the Carnegie Hall debut of an aging celebrity who flew into New York on Tuesday, accompanied by a personal bodyguard, before taking up residence at a high-security location on the Upper East Side. This V.I.P., unannounced on the program, is likely to bring goosebumps to listeners during the final performance of Robert Burns's 'Auld Lang Syne.' The surprise guest, considered a national treasure in Scotland, has never been seen wearing tartans. The dignitary in question is a 270-year-old folk fiddle, covered in what looks like full-body floral tattoos, which belonged to the dance master William Gregg. It was Gregg who taught a 17-year-old Burns dance steps. And it was Gregg whom the young poet sought out, as he later wrote, 'to give my manners a brush.' While there is no direct evidence that Burns played this fiddle, its sound would have been on his mind when he composed the jigs, reels and gracefully tripping strathspeys that continue to resound in any space where Scottish music is celebrated. Today, the instrument is among the most popular items on show at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, and it is a Scottish national treasure, said Suzanne Reid, the conservator for the National Trust for Scotland who accompanied the Gregg fiddle on its trans-Atlantic journey. She was nervously monitoring the humidity levels at Freeman's Hindman auction house, where I was granted a brief private audience. 'It is an integral part of Scottish identity,' the accordionist Gary Innes, who organized the Hoolie, said in an interview. 'To have it played in the most famous concert hall built by a Scot' — Carnegie Hall's construction was funded by the Scotland-born Andrew Carnegie — 'is very special. It brings people together.' (Innes will also perform in the Hoolie with his folk-rock band Manran.) For the teenage Burns, dance lessons with Gregg were a pivotal stage of his self-designed education and an act of rebellion against the conservative Presbyterian values of his father, a ploughman, who, Burns wrote, 'had an unaccountable antipathy against these meetings.' Gregg's dance school, at the Bachelors' Club in rural Tarbolton, was a steppingstone on Burns's path to becoming cultured and, Innes said, most likely a place to meet women. A stained patch on the violin's shoulder, darkened by contact with skin and sweat, seems to embody the memory of music-making and dancing in snug country parlors. On Saturday, the violinist Duncan Chisholm will place his chin on that spot when he plays the Gregg fiddle at Carnegie Hall. 'Just to be able to hear it gives you a connection to Robert Burns,' he said. 'To listen to this instrument that he listened and danced to and purportedly played as well — it's just lovely to hold something like that in your hands.' Made of pinewood, bird's-eye maple and plain-cut sycamore, the violin is almost certainly the work of a Scottish luthier, Reid said. But, she added, the decorations remain something of a mystery: stylized flowers and foliage in red, black and green bordered by an ebonized toothed border and sides herringboned with leaves and seeds. Reminiscent of Turkish or Persian art, they would have stood out in the rustic interiors of Burns's time. The violin maker David Rattray, who did restorations on the instrument in 2016 and published a book on Scottish violin makers, said in an email that the decorations only bore a superficial resemblance to Norwegian Hardanger fiddles, which often sport elaborate pen-and-ink patterns. 'The Persian-style designs on the Gregg are quite different to the more geometric and often inlaid Hardanger decorations,' he said. 'I have never come across anything similar.' For Chisholm, a fiddler and composer whose music is strongly influenced by the natural world, an instrument like the Gregg fiddle — along with the Scottish landscape — provides continuity in an evolving tradition that is still largely transmitted orally. 'I see Scottish music as a big river that runs through our lives and has existed for a thousand years,' he said. 'Everyone who involves himself in the tradition finds little tributaries that we spin off on in our own individual way.' 'The constants are the instruments,' he added. 'We don't know the situations this fiddle has been in, the many parties it's been at, the conversations it's had with people like Burns. These instruments have a story, but it's a story that will never be told.'
