When my love of Celtic and British music was still new, I often bought CDs on a whim without knowing anything about the music included or the artists involved. Through a lot of trial and error, I learned to be a little more discriminating in my tastes.

Many of those early purchases have been collecting dust in a box for years. Recently, I decided to sort through them and see which are worth keeping. I warily put this one, Dance Across the Sea: Dances & Airs from the Celtic Highlands, into my CD player, worried that any disc that doesn't include the names of the musicians involved on the front or side of the disc must have something to hide.

Surprise, surprise. It's pretty good.

As its title suggests, the album is packed with English, Irish and Scottish dance tunes, including "The Butterfly," "Trip to Durham," "Nonesuch," "Black Nag" and "Rose of Lucerne."

Mark Roberts (wood flute, tin whistles, flute, bodhran and guitar) and Sandol Astrausky (fiddle) take the lead, providing melodic, lovingly arranged tunes that are a pleasure to hear. They're joined here by Bruce Foulke (guitars), Alan Bradbury (accordion, double bass), Claudine Langille (mandolin), Mairead Loughnane Doherty (Irish harp) and the Lakewest Chorus (who appear only once, in the background). You might recognize Roberts and Langille from their past membership in the band Touchstone.

This is truly a nice collection of tunes. My only real complaint is that some of the tracks fade out, rather than ending properly. I hate that. Still, I think I'll put this disc on a shelf, not back in the box.