As a bandmate of mine likes to say, music is "an accumulation game". This is certainly true of making a living from performing, and it's a reasonable reflection of the portfolio careers my peers and I have worked hard and been lucky to build over the last couple of decades. I'm always struck when someone interested in a career in folk ...

And Why It’s The Right Thing To Do For more than two decades, the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland’s (NYPBS) Ensembles programme has upheld a rare, meritocratic principle: that anyone who earns a place through audition and chooses to take part should be able to access world-class music education free of charge. This year, that mode...

I started working at the NYPBS in 2020, and it's been an exhilarating few years of development as we worked to optimise a model that was in place for over 20 years. In that time, we learned a lot, ran into challenges in a changing world, and piloted new ideas and initiatives. Now we're launching 'NYPBS 2.0', the next iteration of the N...

How we're rethinking access, inclusion and what fairness really means at the National Piping Centre At the National Piping Centre (NPC) our mission is to ‘enrich lives through piping’. If we want to live up to our name and be a national resource, it’s important that the lives we’re enriching are representative of our society. For years...

It turns out that confidence and cohesion are not taught, they’re nurtured. We have prioritised technical excellence and expert guidance in music education for a long time, particularly in the competition-centric world of piping. If we can enhance the sound, tighten the corps, or improve the group’s technique, then confidence, success,...