"We are all very upset to learn of Martyn's death. It has been such a delight for us to work with him over the last 4 years. He was mixing traditional Scottish music with contemporary grooves and arrangements in a very unique and soulful way. He will be badly missed as a creator, player and inspiring man."

"Martyn never planned to get up anyone's nose. He was full of integrity, as a person and as an artist, and he had enormous regard for traditional music – he respected traditional musicians far above anything he ever did himself. He was never radical just for the sake of it – it was always in pursuit of what he wanted to do artistically."

"The musical world that Celtic Connections inhabits is much diminished with the loss of the musical genius and beautiful soul that was Martyn. Martyn was the boy who did it first, who did it best - and whose most recent work in 'Grit' showed that he still towered above the rest in terms of imagination, understanding, humour, respect and daring in his music."

"When I first heard his stuff, I just couldn't believe anyone could be that audacious. I still had the idea back then that there was such a thing as going too far with traditional music – and Martyn was certainly doing that. I almost liked his music in spite of myself."

"The sheer, breathtaking brilliance of Martyn Bennett was the shot in the arm that Scottish music needed to send it rocketing, supercharged, into the 21st century."

"You have achieved what I hoped you were going to achieve, which was to bring the old to the new, and you have bloody done it."

"If he were still here, on the one hand Martyn might well have laughed at such lofty language; on the other he'd have seen it as no more than his due. He relished puncturing pretension just as he espoused the grandest artistic ideals; was as capable of deep humility as he was of audacious ambition."