UBC back acclaimed musician - Donnie Munro

UBC Group support  major new shows by former Runrig Star - Donnie Munro

The Scottish Musician and Song Writer, Donnie Munro, formerly of Rock Band Runrig, is about to embark on a series of thematic concerts to follow up the success of his most recent award winning album, Heart of America, voted Album of the Year in the 2006 Scottish TradMusic Awards.

The show, titled An Turas-the journey, is described by the singer as a personal journey in song through some of the powerful themes of his Highland background and drawn from a career of over twenty albums. It is also a celebration of a musical career extending over almost three decades and which took Munro and his Runrig colleagues from the village dance halls to the international arenas, sharing stages with some of the biggest names in the rock world.

The singer will perform his show, An Turas, at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 28^th of January as part of Celtic Connections where he will be joined on-stage by the Glasgow Islay Choir, Strings from RSAMD and along with Munro’s regular band, guest musicians, Alan Henderson of Blazing Fiddles, (fiddle), Sandy Brechin of Bùrach (Accordion) and Fraser Fifield (Tenor Sax) will also feature .The concert will also be recorded for Greentrax Records.

Munro said from his Skye home,

“I have played at Celtic Connections in the past and many times at the Concert Hall but this is my first time back in the main auditorium with my current band. It is a great concert venue and a great festival and I am really looking forward to bringing this special show to Celtic Connections .The line up will feature over 45 performers on stage and will produce a really big exciting sound.”

Chief Executive of the UBC Group, James Pedrana said; "Donnie Munro has been a constant feature of the highland,  Scottish and international  music scene for years. He was the front man for the hugely sucessful Gaelic rock group, Runrig, And we at the UBC Group Ltd  are delighted to support Donnie as he continues on what is now a very successful solo career".

Munro will also be taking the show to the new Eden Court Theatre, Inverness on Feb 16^th, a nostalgic journey back to the theatre which in many ways became  the ‘springboard’ for the international music career which followed.

Munro said he was looking forward to playing in the Highland capital and in particular to being back in the newly re-furbished Eden Court Theatre.

He will also be playing the Queens Hall in Edinburgh Feb 15^th and the Rothes Halls in Glenrothes on Feb 13^th, followed by a number of European Festival appearances later in the year.

Munro, the former lead singer and front-man of the highly successful Scottish Celtic Rock Band Runrig, and previous Rector of the University of Edinburgh and  UHIMI, has  been at the forefront of many of the recent developments in the language and culture through his work with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the national centre for Gaelic language and culture on Skye.

The singer is married with four children and lives with his wife and family, at Scorrybreac in his native village of Portree, Isle of Skye.

Munro is currently signed to Scottish Label, Greentrax Records.

The shows are being sponsored by Highland based companies, UBC Group Ltd and Crannog Concepts.

Notes

AN TURAS –the journey

The An Turas Concerts will cover a broad narrative through song on the powerful universal themes of:  displacement, migration, the sea, land, love, loss, family, war, culture, celebration and, placed, as it is, between Highland Year of Culture 2007 and Year of Home- coming 2009 it touches on many of the issues reflected in the history of the people of the Highlands and Islands.

Munro is an artist whose work deals very much with the sense of place, the people, and the physical, cultural and social environment of his Highland up-bringing and is at the same time both particular and universal. He has always felt it important to place the particular within the context of the universal and sees all contributing culture as part of one great rich fabric of internationalism. He believes it is an often committed error to confuse the ‘particular’ with a limited parochialism and believes all cultures are given strength and validation by being placed within the context of internationalism. Music and the arts are deep expressions of a universal human condition and are not limited by the divisions of national boundaries or political constructs. Identity is a mindset not a map.