FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tamar Fortgang
213-237-2873 (do not publish)
REDCATpr@calarts.edu

Scottland's Brian McNeill And Special Guests Present Scottish Crossings at REDCAT

February 3
REDCAT
8:30 p.m.
$24 general admission

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January 22, Los Angeles -- One of Scotland's great musical forces, Brian McNeill is a performer, songwriter, composer, producer and musical director. He brings his unique blend of traditional Scottish music and storytelling to CalArts' REDCAT performance space for a program he titles "Scottish Crossing" and features music from his CD The Back O' the North Wind, available on Greentrax Records, UK. Joining McNeill will be piper Chris Gibb along with an ensemble of local musicians led by CalArts alum Eric Barber. In addition to being a performer and composer, Brian McNeill also heads the Scottish Music Department at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD). He appears at REDCAT as one of a series of artistic exchanges between CalArts and the RSAMD.

REDCAT - the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater - is CalArts' new performance venue and gallery in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Admission is $24.00 for general admission seating. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office located at the corner of 2nd and Hope streets, by calling 213-237-2800 or online.

Brian McNeill plays fiddle, viola, mandolin, cittern, bouzouki, guitar, concertina, bass and hurdy-gurdy. He was a member of one Scotland's most influential traditional music ensembles, the Battlefield Band, and more recently with the Scottish supergroup Clan Alba.

McNeill was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1950. He began his musical training in his early teens with violin lessons, but soon forsook that instrument for the electric guitar. A comprehensive musical education and a mildly misspent youth were the result - until his student years brought him to Celtic music. He knew immediately that this was a music he had to play and as a direct consequence, in 1969 he picked up his fiddle again and formed The Battlefield Band, which has since become one of Scotland's best-known ensembles. Brian's songwriting, mostly about Scotland's past and future has long been recognized. The Yew Tree, The Lads O' The Fair, Montrose and The Snows Of France And Holland were among the best-loved of Battlefield Band's repertoire, and The Devil's Only Daughter won Britain's prestigious National Songsearch competition in 1987.

1989 saw the publication of Brian's first novel, The Busker, and a year later Brian left Battlefield Band to concentrate more on writing and solo projects. In the last few years he has toured extensively with the eight-strong Scottish "supergroup" Clan Alba, with his old friend Iain MacKintosh, with the Scottish-Irish line-up of Kavana, McNeill, Lynch and Lupari and with Ireland's Martin Hayes and Nova Scotia's Natalie MacMaster in the highly rated US Celtic Fiddle Festival series. His production skills are also in increasing demand and his name can be found on albums by many of the Celtic scene's most important artists, among them Eric Bogle, Davey Arthur , Jock Duncan , Ed Miller , Heather Heywood and Tony McManus.

The success of the landmark Scots Women concert at Celtic Connections 2001 , of which he was musical director and his recent appointment as Head of Scottish Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow have reinforced Brian's position as one of today's great forces in Scotland's music.

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