The evenings’ line-up included acclaimed traditional Gaelic Singers Maeve Mackinnon and James Graham, who wowed the spectators with their knowledge of their material and stunning solo and duo pieces, with complementing sounds and technical styles. They were accompanied by the mygaelic.com house band consisting of Hamish Napier, Rachel Newton and Barry Reid.

The evenings’ revellers witnessed a fantastic blend of traditional Gaelic song from Maeve and James, and some Scottish tunes with a modern twist. An electric harp, a keyboard, whistle, flute and guitar produced a fantastic combination of classic sounds from the Gaeldom and chilled-out jazz-like melodies to get the feet tapping and the heads bobbing. It would have been a challenge for anyone to watch the performances without dancing in their seat. To add to the night’s already electric atmosphere, 4 lovely young ladies from Falkirk; Morag Dunn, Amanda Sim, Rachel Deans and Emma Deans, sang Acappella in close harmony producing a blend of sweet voices that filled the conservatory of Bar Brell, Ashton Lane, from wall-to-window. The haunting melodies provided a brilliant contrast to the up-beat and lively tempos from the mygaelic.com house band.

The audience were also lucky enough to sample some fine Scottish step dancing from Hamish Napier, who along with Maeve and James got the crowd whooping and hollering with some rhythmic puirt-a-beul. At the interval people were invited to take part in the mygaelic.com quiz with the chance to win a digital camera and an MP3 player amongst other goodies. With a large number of entrants, it came down to a tie-breaker (cue tense music). In the end mygaelic.com awarded two goodie bags to the lucky winners, Fiona Mac Innes and Colin Masterton. The atmosphere of the evening was held together with the aid of compere Fiona Dunn.

Not only was the gig highly entertaining, displaying some of Scotland’s finest home-grown talent, but it was a major part in moving the Gaelic language into mainstream entertainment. With a multi-cultural audience of all ages and levels of Gaelic and indeed foreign languages a-like, Gaelic took centre stage. With phenomenal performers, a spirited atmosphere, a great venue and the sound of Gaelic being nattered casually across the room, this really was mygaelic.com triumphing at Glasgow’s 2009 West End Festival.

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Check out some of the pictures from the evening below:

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