Tickets for this year’s Piping Live! international festival are now on sale. Go online to https://pipinglive.co.uk/tickets/.

Piping Live takes place in Glasgow from August 10-18 and features a host of events including the Masters Solo Piping competition, the International Quartet competition, the Silver Chanter, and Pipe Idol.

The popular Gordon Duncan Memorial Competition returns for this year, too. This sees three (still to be announced) pipers from Scotland, Ireland and Brittany compete over three sets of Scottish, Irish and Breton tunes. The format is similar to the one held for many years at the Lorient Interceltique Festival in Brittany, which Gordon won four times.

Artists taking part in the festival include: Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band, Dougie MacLean, Beolach, Glasgow Police Pipe Band, Flook, Jarlath Henderson, Boghall and Bathgate Caledonia Pipe Band, Inveraray & District Pipe Band, Callum Beaumont, Finlay Johnston, Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band, Angus MacColl Snr., and The Armagh Pipers Club.

More information on participating artists can be found HERE.

Stuart Letford playing the Tain Pipes last month at Culloden.
Stuart Letford playing the Tain Pipes last month at Culloden.

One event that will be of interest to those interested in piping history is Professor Hugh Cheape’s Museum Tour which takes place on Monday, August 12 at 11:00 (and again at 15:00).

In recent months The National Piping Centre’s museum has had many more piping artefacts added, including the Tain Pipes. These pipes, sometimes referred to as the Culloden Pipes and which were donated by Mr & Mrs Roddy MacKenzie of Paris, date from around the mid-18th century. They were possibly played a piper at the Battle of Culloden (1746) but were subsequently hidden behind a stone fireplace wall in Tain, Ross & Cromarty. Only the drones remain. The pipes are made from laburnum and mounted with whale ivory. They are in very good condition.

An interesting story about these pipes and the donation can be read in the June 2019 Piping Times which goes on sale next week.

Tickets for the Museum Tours are available from The National Piping Centre Shop. Please arrive 15 minutes before the tour begins.