The Culture Show Uncut - 2008/2009 - Episode 22

Tonight's Culture Show comes from the Old Fruitmarket in the heart of Glasgow's Merchant City, one of the main venues in the city's Celtic Connections festival. It is one of the world's largest winter music festivals with 1500 musicians from all round the globe performing in 300 concerts. Lauren Laverne looks at the growing appeal of a simpler, stripped-back approach to music in these new economic times, and some of the best acts of the Festival line-up will be performing on the show. To mark the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth, some of Scotland's finest actors, led by Robert Carlyle and Siobhan Redmond, perform Burns's most striking and rarely celebrated works. There is a profile of the work of rising star theatre director Rupert Goold, whose controversial and much criticised production of King Lear comes to the Young Vic on January 29th. Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand are due to release their much awaited third album and The Culture Show has been following progress of the new work in the run up to its release. Nihal joins the group in their rehearsal room in Glasgow for some exclusive acoustic performances from the new album and we are backstage with the group as they perform some of the new material live at a gig in Manchester. The great Bruce Springsteen is interviewed on his farm in New Jersey as he reflects on a momentous year for America. He discusses the recording of his new album, Working on a Dream, which he has made with the E Street Band, plus his thoughts on a new political and social culture in America under the Obama administration.