CELTIC Connections boss Donald Shaw has expressed fears music isn’t getting the showcase it deserves at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and has called on venues to do more to showcase Scottish musicians to a global audience.

The composer’s comments in an interview with The National come after the Fringe’s chief executive, Shona McCarthy, admitted that the world’s largest arts festival required “rebalancing” with more emphasis on other art forms in addition to stand-up comedy.

Shaw, who has played the Fringe a number of times with Capercaillie, the folk band he founded with Karen Matheson in the 1980s, said venues were going for shows that were rel-atively quick to get in and get out. He said: “Because the festival has built up this reputation for a very quick turnaround of events, a lot of venues are under pressure to put on a lot of shows every two or three hours. That’s a more difficult scenario for music because you’ve got your set-up time, your stage time, your soundcheck, all those things. It is more challenging, but I’d like to think at this time of year Edinburgh should become a showcase for great Scottish music because such a huge international audience is coming.”

Shaw, who is currently working on the programme for next January’s Celtic Connections – the winter festival of world music in Glasgow turns 25 next year – called on venues at the Fringe to “pick up the challenge” and put music on. He said: “ I think the audience is keen for it, it’s just been difficult for programmers to make venues work.

“At comedy shows a guy jumps on stage with a mic and that’s’ it. Those kind of productions are much easier to rattle through.”

Music makes up 14 per cent of this year’s Fringe programme, down one per cent on last year. While there’s a great deal of classical, and acapella groups, and some folk there is very little contemporary music outside of Summerhall and the Queen’s Hall.

Jamie Sutherland, the programmer of the Nothing Ever Happens Here strand of gigs at Summerhall expressed some sympathy for Shaw’s position. He said they were lucky to have a dedicated space for music in the old vet school’s former dissection room, but said quite a lot of contemporary music fans tended to head to the dedicated music festivals.

“There are definitely questions about how to promote in such a saturated market,” Sutherland said. “Due to the choice in the city we do find it very hard to sell bands that would sell out in their own right year-round. Every show is difficult to market during the Fringe.”

He added: “Traditionally the summer is the time of year a festival is not three weeks in a city but three days in a field, and we are aware bands touring to music festivals means they can come to Summerhall but that is also where music fans find live music in the summer, not necessarily at the Fringe.

“We are trying to buck the trend”.

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First live airing of Hebrides soundtrack

BC Scotland had a bona fide hit on its hand in 2013 with its wildlife documentary Hebrides: Island On The Edge. 

The Ewan McGregor-narrated film was three years in the making and featured stunning footage of some of Scotland’s most beautiful landscapes and the animals who live there. 

The series and its follow-up Highlands – Scotland’s Wild Heart feature original music by Donald Shaw, one of the founding members of Scots folk band Capercaillie and the artistic director of Celtic Connections.

Next week, he and some of the musicians who worked on the film will, for the first time, perform the soundtrack live at the Edinburgh Fringe, while some of the iconic scenes are beamed on to a screen behind them. The performance at the Queen’s Hall is a challenge Shaw, who wrote the music along with Simon Ashdown, is looking forward to.

He said: “A lot of people have asked if the music would come to life. We decided to put a show together with basically 20 musicians performing parts of the soundtrack against selected edits from the film. And it’s like a 40-foot screen, so it should be pretty encompassing, I should think.”

There’s one piece of film that stands out for the musician: “So many of the animals have incredible stories. 

“I was particularly moved by the plight of the geese that travel from the Sahara across to Scotland and land on the beaches on Islay, just those huge flocks of birds flying above in perfect sequence of an arrow.”