Close relations from across the Atlantic will be featured during next week’s Yn Chruinnaght Celtic Gathering festival.

The week-long inter-Celtic festival of music and culture begins next week, with the main event being four nights of international music and dance taken from right across the Celtic diaspora.

The concerts take place at the Peel Centenary Centre between Wednesday, July 17, and Saturday, July 20.

For the first time in Yn Chruinnaght’s history, the festival will feature an American act, father and son duo Randy Wilson and Gabriel Dansereau, who specialise in traditional Appalachian music.

Hailing from America’s east coast, Appalachian music is commonly played on the fiddle, banjo and mandolin, and grew out of the folk music brought over to the emerging country of America by Irish and Scottish settlers.

Randy and Gabriel will be on the island for the entire festival, and will perform at the Peel Centenary Centre on Thursday evening, alongside Scots duo, Ron Jappy and harpist Rachel Hair and the Cornish folk and dance group The Daveys.

The Daveys are a family group of musicians, featuring father Mervyn and mother Alison Davey, along with daughter Jowdy and son Carasek, and have performed on the island many times.

Welsh folk stars Jamie Smith’s Mabon will open the festival concerts on Wednesday night, supported by the Mollag Band.

Friday night sees an inventive Breton-Manx collaboration, featuring music created especially by David Kilgallon and Mera Royle, from the Isle of Man, and Breton musicians Lors Landat and Thomas Moisson.

Irish singer Daoirí Farrell, accompanied by Michael O’Connell on uillean pipes and Robbie Walsh on bodhran, will bring the concerts to an end on Saturday night, supported by the Peddyr Cubberly trio.

Festival organiser Chloe Woolley said: ’There is an extra international feel about this year’s festival.

’We’ll welcome old and new friends from the six Celtic nations, but for the first time, we have musicians from the USA. Randy Wilson from Kentucky will be calling some square dances and performing Appalachian music on the banjo along with his son Gabe Dansereau on fiddle.

There is a substantial Celtic diaspora in that part of America, and Randy and family are travelling over to trace their ancestral roots in the Isle of Man and Ireland.

2019 is also Year of Minority Languages, and we’re delighted that publisher Clive Boutle will be attending the festival with his range of specialist books.’

More details and ticket information can be found at ynchruinnaght.com