There's a group in NE Wales, Clerorfa, which is made up of the better Welsh session participants vaguely formalized. Clerorfa is a combination of the Welsh words for Minstrel and Orchestra. They've done a quite successful show in Caernarfon and a few gigs at things like the National Eisteddfod - including an outdoor 'sesh' which attracted a lot of very positive attention. There was some talk of the playing Lorient at some point in the future ...

I think the trick is that they're developing it within a 'session' paradigm rather than starting off as a full-blown band in an 'industrial' paradigm.

sian