• 6 months ago
GLASGOW.

Glasgow is set to host Scotland’s biggest week of bagpipes this summer, with the return of Piping Live! from Saturday 10th - Sunday 18th August, and The World Pipe Band Championships on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th August.

To mark the launch of these world-renowned events, renowned bagpiper and BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2023 finalist Ailis Sutherland, Croft No. Five drummer Paul Jennings and celebrated piper, composer and teacher John Mulhearn, alongside World Pipe Band Championships competitor Emma Hill - who is competing with the Glasgow Skye Association Pipe Band in Grade 2 this year - all performed at the front of Saint Lukes in the east end of the city. A new venue for Piping Live! 2024.

The world’s biggest piping festival, Piping Live! attracts over 30,000 attendees to Glasgow each year, with an eclectic programme of events for pipers and music lovers alike to be held at venues across the city.

The World Pipe Band Championships – a major event which Glasgow first hosted in 1948 and the city has staged every year since 1986 – attracts thousands of pipers and drummers from all over the world to compete in the ultimate ‘battle of the bands’.

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News
Transcript
00:00 [Music]
00:06 [Music]
00:21 My name's Finlay MacDonald, I am the Artistic Director of Piping Live! Piping Festival
00:27 and we're launching the 2024 Piping Live! Festival today.
00:31 This is our 21st festival, coming of age some may say,
00:35 and it's just, you know, we're really humbled and excited to be here 21 years later.
00:42 We all know and we've all heard about the troubles that the creative industries and festivals are going through at the moment,
00:48 so we're really pleased and humbled to be funded and helped out by all our supporters.
00:55 The festival runs from the 10th to the 18th of August,
00:58 and since its start it's always been about celebrating all different kinds of piping.
01:04 Piping is all over the world, piping happens in pretty much every country,
01:09 but for Scotland our whole point here is to celebrate that
01:13 and bring in people that might not always normally play pipes or be involved in piping,
01:18 because it's a big celebration, it's about taking part in the wider cultural events that surround the music.
01:24 So it's all about friendship, it's about coming along, it's about family, it's about taking part.
01:29 We have come and try sessions for people that have never tried pipes but quite fancy it.
01:34 We've got the Big Band Parade, which is the equivalent of a 5k or a 10k,
01:39 where people contribute to the charity and take part in that kind of mass parade on the first Monday of the festival.
01:45 We've got artists from over 25 countries that take part in the festival.
01:50 This year in particular we've got a great group coming from Sweden,
01:55 a great piper, Oncio Lorenzo, who's from Galicia in the north-west of Spain,
02:00 Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, so it really is an international festival.
02:05 The gig we're having here at St Luke's is a really cool gig with an amazing band called Croft No. 5,
02:12 who combine traditional folk music with all sorts of other influences from rock to hip-hop
02:19 to rap, and they're collaborating with a brilliant piper called Ailish Sutherland.
02:25 Also on that bill is a great creative musician from Glasgow, John Mulhern,
02:31 and he's putting on his show of an album he made actually right over the road in the pipe factory here in the east end of Glasgow.
02:39 So he's recreating that album in this venue, which is literally a stone's throw from where he recorded it a few years ago.
02:46 So it's going to be a really special festival.
02:49 One of my favourite things about the whole festival is seeing how Glasgow just opens up to everyone that's involved in it.
02:55 So whether it's the pipe bands playing down Buchanan Street, or the solo competitors,
03:00 or the bands that have travelled in from New Zealand, Australia, Canada,
03:04 they're always met with such a warm welcome, and it really does make the whole city just kind of buzz
03:10 and brings it alive in that week in August.
03:13 I'm Emma Hill, I play the pipes with the Glasgow Sky Association pipe band.
03:18 I'm so excited to be involved with Piping Live this year.
03:21 I'm really looking forward to getting to all the gigs and then finishing off at the World Pipe Band Championships with the band in Grade 2.
03:28 It's so exciting, it's amazing getting to celebrate all the different styles of pipe music and just be involved with everyone.
03:35 Everyone's such a great team, and I can't wait to meet some new people as well and have a listen to some new piping music.
03:41 It's so amazing, the atmosphere is absolutely incredible.
03:44 You get pipe bands from all over the world, and you get to see your friends as well from other pipe bands.
03:50 You get to compete against all these amazing pipers, and it's just an amazing atmosphere to be a part of.
03:55 And Piping Live, is it something that bands and participants look forward to all year?
04:00 It is, yeah. I think it's kind of, for us pipers anyway, it's a very exciting time of year.
04:05 Again, just getting to celebrate all the different styles.
04:08 It's something different from the Highland Pipes that we play, which is always really exciting to get to hear as well.
04:13 Are you confident you might get placed?
04:16 Aye, I think so, yeah. We're hoping for a good run this year.
04:19 The band's doing really well, but yeah, I won't give too much away on that.
04:23 I'm John Mulhern. Piping Live's a major part of the landscape in the piping community, and I guess in the broader traditional music community too.
04:33 21 years now the festival's been going, so it's great, especially in the current climate, that we're able to keep the festival going.
04:43 Largely just down to the support of our amazing community around about the piping centre, and the supporters, and just music fans in general,
04:53 that are actually helping us to get the festival off the ground again.
04:57 For pipers in particular, it forms the lead up to the World Pipe Band Championships.
05:03 Historically that week would have been known as the World's Week, if you like, the World Pipe Band Championships.
05:10 The city itself, Glasgow, has a major influx of pipers and drummers from all across the world, and the festival certainly capitalises upon that.
05:21 So from a piping point of view, that's a particularly interesting thing.
05:25 And then I think another interesting thing in terms of the time of the festival,
05:31 one of the other major traditional music festivals in the city would obviously be Celtic Connections in January,
05:37 so Piping Live, in a smaller sense, forms a counterbalance to that at the opposite side of the year.
05:47 Conceptually the festival's really about showcasing just how broad the tradition is,
05:52 and not just Scotland's piping tradition as well, but piping traditions from across the world.
05:57 So here in Scotland we've got a very strong historical association with competitive piping,
06:03 which is represented in a number of events throughout the programme.
06:07 But on top of that we've got pipe band events, through to folk events.
06:12 On the Monday night of the festival we have a relatively new addition to our programme,
06:17 the Kjolnúr night, which is an experimental music night,
06:22 which is really pushing at the outer fringes of what bagpipes are doing in the wider world of music now.
06:29 And in addition to that, bagpipes from various other parts of the world.
06:34 (music)
06:40 [MUSIC]

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