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One of the many unique and marvellous things about Celtic Connections is that it isn't over all too soon. A few other festivals in its field last a week, and a couple stretch to nine or ten days, but most run over a long weekend and are gone in a flash. Defying the old adage about leaving 'em wanting more, however, after 18 days of Celtic Connections even the most diehard reveller is well and truly sated. (Take it from one who knows...)

As the dust settles, and truckloads of hired-in PA kit trundle back to their warehouses, and festival-goers' body-clocks all over the world readjust to daylight hours, it's already abundantly clear that the Celtic Connections team have delivered another walloping triumph. Even with the final numbers still being crunched, total attendance is confirmed as having topped 100,000 for the third year running, with ticket sales grossing over £1 million (recession or no recession).

While last Tuesday's centrepiece Chieftains gig, featuring Ry Cooder, may have left many in the sell-out crowd feeling distinctly short-changed (even though Cooder's involvement had widely sealed the decision to fork out up to 30 quid for a ticket, he was spotlighted for just two numbers), there was certainly no shortage of satisfied customers elsewhere through the week. Natalie Merchant comprehensively delighted her capacity audience on Thursday, also in the Concert Hall's main auditorium, with a set fully two hours long - including three encores that saw the characteristically intense, somewhat unsmiling singer palpably opening up, letting her hair down and having a ball herself in response to the warmth of her Glasgow reception.

The previous night's concert by Indian percussion virtuoso Trilok Gurtu, with Norwegian saxophone deity Jan Garbarek, Bombay singing star Shankar Mahadevan and Scottish power-trio Lau, a collaboration created bespoke for this year's festival, drew a smaller crowd than its artistic ambition merited, but most who were there will long cherish the memory. Even if things did get a bit chaotic halfway through, when Gurtu unilaterally decided he was having too much fun to interrupt the flow with an interval, resulting in a few pregnant moments' delay between his announcing Lau, who'd been told they were on after the interval, and were thus chilling out in their dressing room.

Fresh congratulations to Lau, incidentally, not only for salvaging an impressive performance from such a shambolic start, but for scooping the Best Group prize at last nigh'ts Radio 2 Folk Awards in London the third consecutive year they've won the same title.

While Gurtu's gig extended those Celtic connections in newly exotic directions, this year's prize for stretching them the furthest must go to Scottish indie/jazz maverick Bill Wells's performance at the Classic Grand on Thursday, with experimental Japanese singers Nikaido Kazumi and Shugo Tokumaru. I wasn't there myself, but word came flooding back from those who did go along of perhaps the strangest yet most captivating gem they'd ever experienced at the festival.

Friday and Sunday's Transatlantic Sessions shows, some of whose featured artists also performed at the Radio 2 Awards last night (where they collected the Good Tradition trophy) were likewise deemed by many as the best yet, even by the project's own illustrious standards, while other highlights of the last three days included Friday's Kris Drever/Session A9 double bill at the Old Fruitmarket, where Drever pre-launched his hotly anticipated second solo album, Mark the Hard Earth. Harmony trio The Bevvy Sisters, at the Classic Grand on Saturday, capitalised stunningly on the buzz that's fast been building around their debut release, St James Sessions, while the same night Orkney eight-piece The Chair mightily raised the roof firstly at their main ABC show, then at the Festival Club later on. By all accounts, too, Danny Thompson and Friends, at the Fruitmarket on Saturday with yet another sellout, was every bit as special and spectacular as Thompsons singular genius warrants.

The three climactic club nights at the Art School witnessed the customary merry rampage, with other pyrotechnic performances from the Peatbog%20Faeries, Michael McGoldrick and John Doyle, Breabach with Le Vent du Nord, and many more, culminating in the traditional scratch supergroup, a fixture of the final night that's previously spawned the Treacherous Orchestra. This year's dirty dozen or so included the likes of Ruaridh MacMillan, Ross Couper, Jon Somerville, Innes Watson, Iain Copeland and Andy Thorburn, newly and resplendently banded as The Invertebrates. And with the rumour widely abroad that next year will see the club welcomed back to its birthplace at the Central Hotel following the latter's complete refurbishment, thus Celtic Connections 2010 sank gratefully into slumber.