Singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson has clearly inherited a lot of talent from his celebrated parents, folk-rock icons Richard and Linda, but he's forged those gifts into a sound that needs no coat-tails to ride on. There are echoes of his father, particularly, in the steelier edge of his singing, and in his penchant for dark, sometimes brutally discomfiting material. But his voice is an instrument to savour entirely in its own right, complemented by trenchant, authoritative songcraft. CELTIC RADIO: Music, interviews and live shows from Celtic Connections

The latter was bravely paraded in the two new numbers that opened the set, with a lone Thompson scorning all safety nets other than his own acoustic guitar, airing tracks from his forthcoming third solo album of original material. The angsty, slow-burning Where To Go From Here and the pretty I Figured It Out showcased Thompson's impressive vocal compass, which ranged over the show from a burnished, Elvis-like bass to soaring operatic intensity. Other standouts of his solo first half included a pair of gritty anti-love songs, I Wish It Was Over and Don't Ask Me To Be Friends, and the dreamily strung-out That's No Way To Be, awash with shimmery reverb.

Thompson's most recent recording is a collection of country covers, Up Front & Down Low, paying tribute to his first musical love. To round off the night, he brought out the hotshot US backing trio of Brad Albetta (aka Mr Martha Wainwright), on bass and backing vocals, David Mansfield on guitars and pedal steel, and drummer Graham Hawthorne to join him in a selection of that material. His treatments of such tracks as Merle Haggard's (From Now On All My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers, Dolly Parton's My Blue Tears and the vintage Jimmie Osborne hit My Heart Echoes were as faithful as they were unmistakably, and compellingly, his own. Thompson's parentage won't have harmed his career, but he has no need to rely on it.

balkan night ABC, Glasgow HHHH Celtic Connections' expansion into wider world music territory continued with this three-band bill, featuring debut UK performances by leading contemporary acts from Serbia and Croatia, plus another, The Stobo Village Band, that seems to think it's Balkan, but actually comes from the Borders and is led by Mouth Music founder Martin Swan.

The Belgrade-based seven-piece Balkanopolis, led by charismatic singer and multi-instrumentalist Slobodan Trkulja, put an emphatically modern and highly sophisticated spin on elements of Balkan tradition, not least in order to banish the malign spectre of "turbofolk", the bastardised, ultra-nationalist ballads that notoriously dominated Serbian music during the Milosevic era. After a childhood steeped in folk music, Trkulja studied saxophone at the Amsterdam Jazz Conservatory, a schooling that showed as he put his band through their paces in an extensively improvised workout, elaborating traditional-based melodies and rhythms into a profusion of virtuosic solos. Elsewhere, the style favoured crisp, deftly spliced folk-rock, sampling the flavours and textures of the 14 different instruments Trkulja plays, including Serbian bagpipes, the oboe-like duduk and the tamburica, a long-necked mandolin.

Most memorable of all, however, were the vocal numbers, with Trkulja joined by one or two of his colleagues in truly magical harmonies, stirringly invoking the Balkans' unique cultural synthesis of Eastern and Western, Islamic and Christian influences.

Kries's reworking of their native Croatian music also centres on impassioned vocals, primarily those of founder and frontman Mojmir Novakovic, whose sweeping range and epic, soaring delivery was sometimes reminiscent of Irish sean-nós singing. Traditional instrumentation (including bagpipes, whistles and lijerica, a small knee-violin) and material meshed with electric guitars and drums in a raw-edged, rock-based sound matching primal force with transcendent ecstasy.