SALSA CELTICA

With their March 2000 album release The Great Scottish Latin Adventure in the top 10 of the European and Canadian World music charts plus European and North American tours booked for this summer, Salsa Celtica have come a long way from their roots playing the bars and clubs of Edinburgh and Glasgow.

This summer the group will perform in front of 6,000 New Yorkers at the prestigious Lincoln Centre before setting off to cover most of the United States and Canada. Their album has received ecstatic critical reviews across the globe from Australia to Italy to Spain to Argentina to the US and Canada.

Salsa Celtica formed in 1996 with musicians from across the Scottish jazz and folk scenes and have toured continuously since, taking in most of the Hebrides from Iona to Orkney, jazz and folk festivals across the UK and Ireland, and touring as far as Georgia in the East and Iceland in the North. However with the success of their second album, 2003 looks set to be their most interesting year yet, having started off with a sellout performance at Celtic Connections, followed immediately by a festival in front of over 7,000 people on the beach in Gran Canaria, Canary Islands.

The group's mix of all things salsa with its signature of Scottish folk sounds an unlikely mixture, yet has fascinated listeners across the globe, as much in the salsa homelands of Latin America and New York as in the Celtic countries.