Tunes for a Monday Morning

Yesterday was World Accordion Day, so our music this week features four fine squeezebox players working in the English/Irish/Scottish folk tradition.

Above, the great button accordian player Sharon Shannon (from County Clare, Ireland) performs "Blackbird: Padraig O'Keefe's/The Happy One-Step" with multi-instrumentalist Alan Connor at the Celtic Colours International Festival, Cape Breton Island (2014). Shannon has released many excellent albums over the last twenty years, the latest of which is In Galway, in collaboration with Connor (2015).

Below, "Northern Lass/The Kings' Barrow" by Leveret, a trio of English folk music stalwarts based in Derby and Stroud. Andy Cutting plays the melodeon here, with Sam Sweeney on fiddle and Rob Harbron on concertina. The song can be found on Leveret's first album, New Anything (2015).

Above, "Save the Bees" from Lau, an English & Scottish folk trio named after the Orcadian word for "natural light." Martin Green plays piano accordion, with Kris Drever on guitar and Aidan O'Rourke on fiddle. The song is from their third album, Race The Loser (2012).

Last, "Beads & Feathers" by Sea Road Sessions. That's Alan Kelly on piano accordion, with Kris Drever again on vocals & guitar, plus Steph Geremia (vocals & flute), ��amonn Coyne (banjo), Ian David Carr (guitar), and Staffan Lindfors (bass). The song was filmed during the sound check before the band's appearance at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, 2015.

Photographs: A button accordion player in an old French postcard, and paper art by Peter & Donna Thomas.