GLASGOW'S Celtic Connections music festival is heading for a sell-out.

With one week until Europe's biggest traditional music event kicks off, tickets are being snapped up fast.

Indie-rockers Idlewild, guitar veteran John Martyn and James Grant are sold out shows, and a second date has been announced for former Love and Money man Grant, at the Tron Theatre on January 19.

Tickets for workshop sessions ranging from Samba to fiddle, bodhran and clarsach, are also going fast.

This year's Glasgow music event, which notched up more than 100,000 ticket sales last year, looks on target to exceed that this year.

The event has been expanded by newly-appointed Artistic Consultant Donald Shaw, who has introduced an Americana strand, drawing acts such as Rosanne Cash, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Mary Chapin Carpenter, who plays at the Royal Concert Hall next Thursday.

In other additions, indie acts such as Isobel Campbell and Aberfeldy are proving to be hot tickets.

The Evening Times launches our coverage of the 2007 Celtic Connections music festival with a full-colour eight-page pullout in TimesOut tomorrow.

And this year, for the first time we are also covering the festival online starting tomorrow via www.eveningtimes.co.uk/celticconnections.

We will follow the festival from its opening with the torchlit procession through Glasgow next Wednesday, until the last concerts on February 4.

Festival-goers will also get the chance to have their say online.

The Evening Times is media partner of Celtic Connections for the third year, and our daily coverage is second-to-none.