Today’s pro­gramme takes a look at the expan­sion of Celtic music and themes into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent gen­res of music.

Here we are fea­tur­ing musi­cians and music that start from the Celtic tra­di­tion and take it for­ward into oth­er realms, from Joanie Mad­den to Mendelssohn to Ger­al­do and his Orches­tra; from thun­der­ous­ly spec­tac­u­lar orches­tral arrange­ments (you’ll hear sev­er­al of those today) in the wake of River­dance, to inspir­ing music for a small Celtic ensem­ble and organ, played in the largest Goth­ic space in the world.

Yes, you will find quite a num­ber of tra­di­tion­al tunes in today’s pro­gramme, but they may not be arranged quite as you might expect. And yes, there are quite a few tra­di­tion­al musi­cians here too – but they are not always per­form­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly (although there are quite a num­ber of tra­di­tion­al per­for­mances in today’s playlist).

Today, rev­el in the lush orches­tra­tions of Erich Kun­zel and Phil Coul­ter, for exam­ple; lis­ten to Celtic Thun­der and Celtic Woman; and enjoy an exten­sive col­lec­tion of exact­ly what it says on the tin: Celtic Moods.

In addi­tion, at 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic / 8pm or mid­night UK time, tune in to the lat­est edi­tion of “Where’ve You Been” — where we expe­ri­ence Hal­lowe’en a lit­tle ear­ly at The Haunt­ed Man­sion Trib­ute — details here. And “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” every 4 hours from 4am Pacific.