The Arts in 2011: Jim Gilchrist on folk and jazz

From Celtic Connections, star acts from across the Pond to a record-breaking radio jazz show, 2011 promises much to look forward to. Bring it on

VIEWED not so much through a glass darkly as through a dauntingly thick Celtic Connections programme, it can be hard to preview the coming year when it kicks off with Glasgow's 18-day eclectic music extravaganza, featuring everything from percussion wizard Zakir Hussain's Indo-Scots Pulse of the World collaboration to the Waterboys singing Yeats and old Uncle Tom Jones and all. For full details, see www.celticconnections.com.

Getting back to roots, Edinburgh's Wee Folk Club at the Royal Oak (www.royal-oak-folk.com) anticipates guests, including the fine traditional song and guitar duo Lucy Pringle and Chris Wright (13 February) while in May Armagh singer Geraldine Bradley makes her Edinburgh debut. Likewise, Edinburgh Folk Club kicks off the year next Wednesday with the renowned north-east fiddler Paul Anderson and singer Shona Donaldson (www.myspace.com/edinburghfolkclub).

The big guns of the Scottish fiddle world are also hitting the road, with gigs from Blazin' Fiddles (www.blazin-fiddles.co.uk) in March/April, and from Session A9 (www.sessiona9.com), promoting their new album, One for the Road, in February and later in May.

THE ARTS IN 2011

• Duncan Macmillan on visual art

• Fiona Shepherd on pop and rock

• Kenneth Walton on classical music

• Jim Gilchrist on folk and jazz

Look out, too, for American visitors, including the acclaimed Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three from Missouri who, following a Celtic Connections appearance, return for an extensive tour in May. Likewise "hillbilly hurricanes" the Wilders return later in the year, as does North Carolina's engaging Woody Pines.

On the jazz front, things get off to an early start with the fourth Fife Jazz Festival (www.fifejazzfestival.com), running from 4-6 February, featuring British saxophone star Courtney Pine with a band including the superb young pianist Zoe Rahman and Cuban violinist Omar Puente. Other attractions include seasoned American pianist Cyrus Chestnut, and the home-grown Ken Mathieson Classic Jazz Orchestra with Angie King.

Mathieson's outfit, by the way, has an album of the late Benny Carter's Music, recorded with saxophonist Alan Barnes, due for release, including the hitherto unrecorded Glasgow Suite, which Carter wrote as composer-in-residence at the inaugural Glasgow International Jazz Festival.This year's festival (29 June - 3 July; www.jazzfest.co.uk) is still arranging its 25th anniversary programme, which will be suitably celebratory, and include a specially commissioned piece from Tommy Smith and his Karma band.

Smith, as ever, has a busy year ahead, not least as director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, with a March tour with Grammy-winning singer Kurt Elling, a May collaboration with US saxophone ace Bill Evans, while later in the year sees the SNJO renew their spectacular collaboration with the Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers and with Scottish jazz veteran Bobby Wellins in his Culloden Moor Suite.

Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, of course, runs from 22-31 July. In the meantime Edinburgh's award-winning Jazz Bar launches a new year's programme, including veteran American saxophonist Herb Geller on 2 February and Australian free-improvisation pianist Alister Spence and his trio on 16 February (www.thejazzbar.co.uk).

Look out, too, for new albums from Scotland's international class pianist Brian Kellock and his trio, and from singer Cathie Rae with guitarist Graeme Stephen, both on the new Thick-Skinned label (www.thick-skinned.com), and a joint tour next month. And don't forget that the king of jazz-funk, saxophonist Maceo Parker, lets rip in Edinburgh's HMV Picture House on 12 March.

New Year congratulations, by the way, to Alan Steadman's Jazz Waves programme on Radio Tay, which celebrates its 28th anniversary this Friday, making it Scotland's longest- running jazz programme by far, and very possibly the longest-running UK jazz show still on air. The anniversary comes just before February's bicentenary of that other Tayside phenomenon, the Bell Rock Lighthouse, and Steadman tells me that, as organiser of Arbroath's enterprising Hospitalfield Jazz Club, he has commissioned pianist Paul Harrison to assemble a band for 19 March, recreating the music of the famous American West Coast Band, the Lighthouse All-Stars, who included such, er ... luminaries as Chet Baker and Art Pepper.