The Piping Live! Big Band will return for its 8th showcase at this year’s festival. Pipers of all ages and abilities are invited to take part. In 2025, the Big Band will parade from Mansefield Park in Partick to the concourse at the iconic Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It will step off on this 0.5mile route at 12noon, arriving at the museum around 12.20pm.
The Piping Live! Big Band is a mass participation event that opens our festival. 200 pipers will gather, ranging from young learners playing their chanters, to seasoned professionals playing the pipes in their retirement.
The Big Band will walk the streets of Glasgow performing a repertoire of tunes that everyone can play. The Piping Live! Big Band is open to anyone who plays a practice chanter, bagpipes, snare, bass or tenor drum, or is a drum major! All ages are welcome. Past events welcomed musicians aged 8-86.
This year, the event is supporting Scotland-based charity the Eilidh MacLeod Memorial Trust, which was established in honour of the talented piper, Eilidh MacLeod, who died at age 14 in May of 2017 from the Manchester Arena Attack after the Ariana Grande concert. The trust aims to bring children and young people into the piping and musical communities by supporting their musical education in all genres and disciplines. The Eilidh MacLeod Memorial Trust has supported thousands of young musicians, offering them the opportunity to discover and share the same deep love of music that Eilidh MacLeod cherished.
00:22My name's Finlay MacDonald, I'm the Artistic Director of the Piping Live Festival.
00:26We've just had our 8th big band performance and parade from Mansfield Square right up here to the iconic Kelvin Grove Art Galleries.
00:35And this year we've had the biggest turnout of any band, over 200 pipers and drummers joining together to play music for the first day of Piping Live.
00:42And the great thing about this is, obviously we've got the World Pipe Band Championships on Friday and Saturday,
00:48but this is about taking part, it's about being part of that bigger community event,
00:52playing alongside older people, younger people, people from all different backgrounds,
00:57and just enjoying that whole joy of playing in a mass kind of band.
01:01Piping Live is now in its 22nd year,
01:04we've started to really celebrate the whole different world of piping that exists all around the globe.
01:11So we have a whole range of events from come and try sessions, so if people fancy playing the pipes and never have had the chance,
01:18we're offering come and try sessions.
01:20We run some of the highest elite competitions for solo and quartet pipe bands.
01:25We have celebrations of international talent.
01:28This year we've got amazing bands from France, from Ukraine, from Australia, New Zealand, Canada.
01:34So it really is a big celebration of piping and it's celebrating piping in all its forms.
01:39Tickets, so the main festival site is the National Piping Centre up at Coocardins.
01:44You can get day passes for the whole day, there's music from 10 in the morning till 7 at night,
01:49lots of different bands.
01:50Pipinglive.co.uk is the website for tickets.
01:53But out with that we have events in the evening, we've got events at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall,
01:58we've got the Quartets Competition, we've got the Friday Night Folk Concert at St Luke's.
02:02So all the tickets for all the events are available at www.pipinglive.co.uk.
02:07So each year the big band nominates a charity, usually a local charity,
02:12and this year we have partnered up with Ailey MacLeod Trust.
02:16Ailey MacLeod Trust do a huge amount to support young musicians in Scotland.
02:21In particular, because Ailey played the pipes, there's a focus on pipes and drums,
02:25and Ailey was a member of our National Youth Pipe Band as well,
02:28so we thought it was a very fitting charity to work with this year,
02:30and we're delighted that we're raising so much money for that fantastic charity.
02:34Hello, I am Iakin McNeil, and I'm a trustee with the Ailey MacLeod Memorial Trust.
02:39Today was a big day for the Ailey MacLeod Memorial Trust.
02:42Ailey herself was a piper, a very keen and a very talented piper,
02:46and she would have loved this atmosphere.
02:47This is the kind of event that Ailey absolutely loved getting involved with.
02:51So it was really appropriate for the Piping Live to ask us to be the charity this year,
02:56and we were delighted to be involved, and to hear and see the sight of the pipes and drums
03:00marching through Glasgow's West End was really, really, really spine-tingling for us,
03:05as a charity that supports youth music, to see so many young pipers and drummers participating in today.
03:12So a really great day for us as a small charity, but with a big heart and hopefully with a big voice as well
03:18to make a difference for young musicians across Scotland.
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