Bryan Kelso Crow

Bryan Kelso Crow, host of Celtic Connections, is an Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is a native of Tennessee, with Scotch-Irish roots, but he never heard traditional Celtic music until he was in college.

He learned to play the tin whistle while hiking the roads of Ireland in 1978, and has been playing the traditional wood flute since the mid-1980s. He performs in Illinois and Missouri with The Dorians, a three-member Celtic band based in Carbondale, IL.

He taught as an exchange professor at the University of Ulster, outside of Belfast, for the 1985-86 school year, and got to know many Irish musicians during that time.

He is a guest lecturer in the Irish Studies program at Southern Illinois University, and a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Southern Illinois Festival of Irish Music and Dance.

He launched Celtic Connections in 1991 as a local program, and the program moved to national syndication in July 1996.