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Seismic, seminal, visionary, defining – Moving Hearts’ impact on contemporary Celtic music can hardly be overstated. Originally blazing their brief but brilliant trail from 1981-84, they were the first to open up traditional Irish sounds to the bracing influences of rock, funk and jazz, paving the way for such subsequent fusioneers as Capercaillie, Sharon Shannon and Mike McGoldrick.

As announced by their triumphant reunion gigs at Dublin’s Vicar Street a year ago, and a superb set at last summer’s Hebridean Celtic Festival, the band are firing gloriously on all cylinders once again, in an all-instrumental line-up featuring Dónal Lunny (bouzouki), Davy Spillane (uilleann pipes/whistles), Keith Donald (saxophones) Eoghan O’Neill (bass), Noel Eccles (percussion), Anto Drennan (guitar), Graham Henderson (keyboards) and Liam Bradley (drums).

Having met while attending the National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music, at Plockton High School, the Highland five-piece Bodega – winners of the BBC Young Folk Award 2005/6 – are one of Scotland’s most exciting traditional bands. Mixing up bagpipes, fiddle, clarsach, guitar and djembe with Norrie MacIver’s powerful singing, in English and Gaelic, their sound is as fresh as it’s accomplished, matching youthful boldness with precocious maturity.

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