Piping Live! Festival

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Piping Live! Festival
Piping Live! Festival Logo.png
Frequency Annual
Location(s) Glasgow
Years active15
Attendance 30,000
Website www.pipinglive.co.uk

The Piping Live! Festival (a.k.a. Piping Hot Festival) is an annual bagpiping event held in Glasgow by the National Piping Centre. The festival was created in 2003 and occurs on the run-up to the World Pipe Band Championships. [1] It is estimated that the festival alone adds £12 million to Scotland's tourism revenue and it is the largest bagpipe festival in the world. [1] [2]

Glasgow City and council area in Scotland

Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, and the third most populous city in the United Kingdom, as of the 2017 estimated city population of 621,020. Historically part of Lanarkshire, the city now forms the Glasgow City council area, one of the 32 council areas of Scotland; the local authority is Glasgow City Council. Glasgow is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands. Inhabitants of the city are referred to as "Glaswegians" or "Weegies". It is the fourth most visited city in the UK. Glasgow is also known for the Glasgow patter, a distinct dialect of the Scots language that is noted for being difficult to understand by those from outside the city.

National Piping Centre

The National Piping Centre is an institution in Glasgow, Scotland, dedicated to the playing of the bagpipes, to include not only the Great Highland Bagpipes, but also the Scottish smallpipes and Irish uileann pipes, as well as other traditional musical instruments.

The World Pipe Band Championships is a pipe band competition held in Scotland. The event has been operating regularly since 1930, when the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association was formed. For competitive bands, the title of World Champion is highly coveted, and this event is seen as the culmination of a year's worth of preparation, rehearsal and practice.

The festival is always opened with performances in the Royal Concert Hall by musicians including The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland. [3] [4] The festival itself consists of over 150 individual events including free classes, concerts and ceilidhs throughout the week. [5] [4] The festival also has its own "Canada Day" to celebrate the multitude of Canadian Grade I bands who participate in the Championships. [6] The Piping Centre also produces and releases albums around the festival, such as Seudan by the band of the same name in 2011. [7]

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall is a major concert and arts venue, in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is owned by Glasgow City Council and operated by Glasgow Life, an agency of Glasgow City Council, which also runs Glasgow’s City Halls and Old Fruitmarket venue.

The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland is a youth pipe-band headed by Alisdair McLaren, consisting of over 100 members who teach and perform around the British isles. The band was founded in 2003 as part of the National Piping Centre in Glasgow and features pipers and drummers between the ages of ten and twenty five. Their structure currently consists of two bands, the Senior Band and the Development Band.

The festival won Event of The Year at the Scottish Traditional Music Awards in 2008 and in 2010 Eve Muirhead was named the festival's ambassador in an effort to reach out to a younger audience. [8] [9] The event is directed by Roddy MacLeod. [1] [10]

Eve Muirhead Scottish curler

Eve Muirhead is a Scottish curler from Blair Atholl. She won a bronze medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as part of Team GB and is the 2013 World Champion.

Roddy MacLeod, MBE is a Scottish bagpiper, director of the annual Piping Live! Festival and principal of the National Piping Centre.

Related Research Articles

Bagpipes Musical instrument

Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Scottish Great Highland bagpipes are the best known in the Anglophone world; however, bagpipes have been played for a millennium or more throughout large parts of Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, including Turkey, the Caucasus, and around the Persian Gulf. The term bagpipe is equally correct in the singular or plural, though pipers usually refer to the bagpipes as "the pipes", "a set of pipes" or "a stand of pipes".

Pipe band class of musical ensembles

A pipe band is a musical ensemble consisting of pipers and drummers. The term used by military pipe bands, pipes and drums, is also common.

Martyn Bennett was a Canadian-Scottish musician who was influential in the evolution of modern Celtic fusion, a blending of traditional Celtic and modern music. He was a piper, violinist, composer and producer. He was an innovator and his compositions crossed musical and cultural divides. Sporting dreadlocks at the height of his performing career, his energetic displays led to descriptions such as "the techno piper". Diagnosis of serious illness at the age of thirty curtailed his live performances, although he completed a further two albums in the studio. He died fifteen months after release of his fifth album Grit.

Glasgow Police Pipe Band Police pipe band from Glasgow, Scotland

Glasgow Police Pipe Band is a grade one pipe band from Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1883 as the Burgh of Govan Police Pipe Band, the band enjoyed its greatest competitive success as the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band.

Finlay MacDonald is a Scottish musician and composer. He was one of the first pipers to receive a BA in Scottish music and piping from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. MacDonald is head of piping studies at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow. He founded his own band The Finlay MacDonald Band, which toured between 2006 and 2007 to highly positive reviews, though in recent years they have been inactive. Annually he works with Roddy MacLeod to organise the Piping Live! Festival.

Gordon Duncan was a bagpiper, low whistle player and composer, born in Turriff, Aberdeenshire.

Jori Chisholm American musician

Jori Lance Chisholm is an American professional bagpipe player and teacher who lives in Seattle, Washington. Chisholm is a successful solo competitor winning the United States Gold Medal four times and has placed in the top three in Scotland's Argyllshire Gathering Gold Medal competition. He played with the six-time Grade One World Champion Simon Fraser University Pipe Band and was a featured solo performer for the band on multiple occasions. Chisholm has performed in front of sold-out audiences with The Chieftains and with ex-Grateful Dead rocker Bob Weir and his band Ratdog, and has been featured as a soloist or band member on over 20 recordings. His debut solo album Bagpipe Revolution was nominated for Album of the Year by Pipes|Drums magazine. He writes the "Sound Technique" column for the National Piping Centre’s bi-monthly Piping Today Magazine. The New York Times featured Chisholm's online teaching program, BagpipeLessons.com, and described him as a "top-tier teacher" in a front-page story about the growth of Skype music lessons. A cover story in American Profile Magazine named Chisholm one of the "world's elite pipers."

Toronto Police Pipe Band

The Toronto Police Pipe Band is a grade one pipe band based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The band performs at parades, festivals, ceremonies and funerals, and participates internationally in piping competitions.

The Scots Trad Music Awards celebrate Scotland's traditional music in all its forms and create a high profile opportunity to bring the music and music industry into the spotlight of media and public attention.

Fred Morrison Scottish musician

Fred Morrison is a Scottish musician and composer. He is carried on by his daughter Eliane and son Seonaidh. He has performed professionally on the Great Highland Bagpipes, Scottish smallpipes, Border pipes, low whistle, Northumbrian Smallpipes and uilleann pipes.

Stuart Liddell is a Scottish bagpipe player. As well as competing in solo competitions, he is the Pipe major of the Inveraray and District Pipe Band.

The College of Piping was founded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1944 by Seumas MacNeill and Thomas Pearston to pass on the art of the Great Highland Bagpipe to all who wanted to learn Scotland's national instrument. As well as teaching, the College's aims were/are to preserve the heritage of the bagpipe by collecting piping artefacts, manuscripts and memorabilia and by providing a focal point for pipers the world over. College lessons are subsidised by profits from the College Shop which sells instruments, music, Highland wear and bagpipe accessories. A charity, the College often teaches students of low means for free.

Red Hot Chilli Pipers band that plays Celtic rock

Red Hot Chilli Pipers are an ensemble consisting of pipers, guitarists, keyboards and drummers formed in Scotland in 2002. They entered and won the BBC talent show When Will I Be Famous? in 2007.

Duncan Johnstone was a Scottish bagpiper and composer.

Alasdair Gillies was an award-winning Scottish bagpiper and tutor. He became known as one of the most prominent figures in the Highland bagpipe fraternity and had an important influence on solo piping competitions in Scotland. Famous for holding the title of the last pipe major of the Queen's Own Highlanders, Alasdair left the army in 1997 to teach piping at the Carnegie Mellon University Pipe Band.

J. Reid Maxwell pipe band drummer and current leading drummer of the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band

John Reid Maxwell is a pipe band drummer and current leading drummer of the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band. Maxwell is the first person in history to have led the drum corps of two different bands to victory the World Pipe Band Championships.

Donald MacPherson was a Scottish bagpipe player, and one of the most successful competitive solo pipers of all time.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Augustine, Lalila (11 August 2012). "Piping festival sells twice as many tickets as last year". The Herald. Glasgow. p. 8.
  2. ↑ "Pretty Little Skirl". Daily Record. 9 August 2011. p. 23.
  3. ↑ Duncanson, Hilary (3 June 2009). "Prince to Meet Young Entrepreneurs". Press Association Mediapoint.
  4. 1 2 Gray, Rebecca (7 August 2012). "City tunes up for the Olympics". Evening Times. Glasgow. p. 18.
  5. ↑ "Scotland's own Olympics will be piping hot!". Evening Times. Glasgow. 18 July 2012. p. 9.
  6. ↑ Reid, Marelle (3 August 2012). "SFU pipe band off to world championships; Burnaby-based pipers heading off to Glasgow for annual competition". Canwest News Service.
  7. ↑ Gilchrist, Jim (3 August 2011). "Folk, Jazz, Etc : Different key for pipe treasures". The Scotsman. p. 37.
  8. ↑ Wilson, Caroline (8 August 2009). "City braced for its biggest ever piping festival". The Herald. Glasgow. p. 9.
  9. ↑ "The pipes are calling a younger audience". The Times. London. 19 May 2010. p. 16.
  10. ↑ Gilchrist, Jim (14 August 2010). "Review: Glasgow alive with pipers for clash of the titans". The Scotsman. p. 36.

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