Craig Muirhead

Friday 1st March in the King Robert Hotel 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, Callum and Finlay giving us 45 minutes each 🎵.

Rooms have been booked at the hotel too, great that they are being supported given how helpful they have been in getting this recital series off the ground 😁

Can’t wait for this one!

Great concert last night with Strathallan School at Perth Concert Hall. The whole thing was amazing, but I’m loving the pictures of the smiling folk band 😁, battling drum corps ⚔️ and an army of pipers 🎶🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Thanks to my team: Josh, David, Kyle, Jordan, Ian and Mickey for all their work and congrats to all the music staff! 🎄

📸: Dominic Glasgow

📢📢: Next up at the King Robert Hotel, two guys who are at the VERY top of their game 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶. The reigning Glenfiddich Champion, Callum Beaumont and the runner-up, Finlay Johnston, a two-time overall champion himself. To top it off, two great guys as well! 🙌

Friday 1st March 2024, tickets on the door and only £10.00. Get this one in the diary! 📅

Wow. What a night of piping at the King Robert Hotel. My old PM Chris Armstrong followed by another one of the greats, Fred Morrison.
Two immaculate instruments and some amazing tunes, all a half mile from the house! Thanks to the wonderful staff at the King Bob, to the two players and the 130 spectators 😀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶

Also, great to have some of the Strathallan pupils there to hear and meet the guys!

Final reminder, King Bob tomorrow night, Chris and Fred giving us 45 minutes each for only £10 a head!

Tickets are at the door from around 6.50pm (I would advise getting there early). Bar will be open and raffle at the interval! See you there. 🙂

Had a great morning judging the Grade 1 World Amateur Solos at Piping Live. Heading straight to Inveraray practice in Victoria Park for 2pm! 😁🎶
The CLASP The National Piping Centre

Excited to have one of my tunes featured in this new book, celebrating 25 years of The National Piping Centre 🎶

A massive part of my life! 😀

The NPC 25th Anniversary Collection - Book Launch

Join Finlay MacDonald and John Mulhearn as we launch this landmark publication, celebrating 25 years of The National Piping Centre.

Featuring over 170 tunes, the book is a way for The NPC to acknowledge the invaluable contributions made by students and staff in creating the vibrant and forward-looking community that we are all a part of.

As such, you are cordially invited to join us for the book launch event, which will take place as part of Piping Live!

🗓 Wednesday 16th August, 2:30pm
📍 The National Piping Centre Auditorium, McPhater Street

We will begin with a warm welcome and an introduction to the book, followed by musical performances by a few of the nearly 100 contributors to the collection, and rounded off with a drinks reception.

Out of Strathallan for a few hours this morning giving my ‘Introduction to Bagpipes’ lecture to music students at the University of St Andrews. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶

Beautiful morning for a drive ☀️🚗

Spending the day at Carmyle Primary School for the Celtic Connections ’Piper in your School’ workshops using Strathallan School electric chanters! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶

Piping Club: done for 2022 🎶 Thanks to all the amazing participants.

It has been fun. Over and out! ✌️

C 😀

Saturday 17th December, last Piping Club workshop of 2022 😩

It’s a bit of fun this time with three festive tunes on chanter 🎅 - Jingle Bells 🔔 , O’ Come All Ye Faithful ⛪️ and Auld Lang Syne 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿.

Suitable for novice/intermediate pipers of any age! 🎶

Sign up at www.pipingclub.com/workshops - pass on to anyone who might be interested! 😀

Workshops Contact e-mail: [email protected]

A good few days at National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland ‘Four Corners’ weekend in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿.

Great work by Callum Moffat and in the region - and an awesome bunch of kids 😀. Thanks Steven and David from for having me and to Strathallan School for allowing me the time to take part 🎶.

The National Piping Centre

At last year’s Lunch With An Old Bag, I was auctioned off to pipe at someone’s special event in aid of The Prince's Trust Scotland. 😀

Tonight I’m in a little back street of St. Andrews for the gig! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I’m also back on the list as an auction prize this year too! 😝

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶Just finished one of my Piping Club live workshops. We learned ‘Sleep Dearie, Sleep’ which was played by P/M Paul Burns at the funeral of Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. To lighten the mood we finished with a famous little reel called ‘Tail Toddle’. 😀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

To access the workshop and sheet music, head to pipingclub.com/workshops and buy for the 1st of October for £10.00. Suitable for Novice/Intermediate chanter/bagpipers. 😀🎶

Workshops Contact e-mail: [email protected]

Excited to be invited to work on this! 🎶

Tutor announcement! We are delighted to announce that Craig Muirhead will be one of the teachers at our Four Corners: Dumfries outreach weekend on 15th- 16th October. Craig Muirhead is one of Scotland's most experienced performing bagpipers having had a successful career on stage, in pipe bands and in solo competition. He has performed live in front of billions at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games and shared stages with Rod Stewart, Lulu and Amy MacDonald.

Having toured the world as part of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, Craig dedicates the majority of his time to inspiring young pipers and drummers as the Director of Piping and Drumming at Strathallan School in Perthshire. In December 2021, he was named ‘Music Tutor of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards.

All levels of playing are welcome to attend this workshop weekend. Find out more and register here: https://www.nypbs.co.uk/outreach

I try not to take for granted working with friends and people I’ve admired from a young age! 😀🎶

Murray Henderson Inveraray & District

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶 Some of the Lockdown Piping Clubbers have been in touch to say they are competing at their first World Championships 🌎

This gives me so much joy and makes the whole thing worthwhile. 😀 Good luck and enjoy! 🎶🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Can’t wait to join Inveraray & District Pipe Band onstage this Wednesday at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Not a seat to be had and the band sounded amazing at today’s rehearsal!
Inveraray & District Pipe Band

8 years on…

Singer-songwriter Amy McDonald performs during the Opening Ceremony for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games at Celtic Park (Getty Images)

I recently recorded the piping for Bruce Fummey’s latest Scotland History Tours video which was released on YouTube today.

Nice to work with Bruce on this. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Is This The Saddest Bagpipe Tale? Bagpipes are an essential to Highland culture. Scottish history tour guide, Bruce Fummey, tells the story of MacCrimmon's Lament, but asks is there a sadder ...

July online workshop tomorrow at 10am. Learn a tune (Cullen Bay) and keep the fingers going through the summer months. Suitable for novice chanter/bagpipers.

Sign up at www.pipingclub.com/workshops

Workshops Contact e-mail: [email protected]

Looking forward to judging The CLASP live online contest in May.

Today we have a second judge announcement for the Live Online Contest that is coming on 7th May. We are delighted to welcome Craig Muirhead to the team. Craig Muirhead is from Bannockburn and is the Director of Traditional Music and Scottish Culture at Strathallan School having grown the school’s piping and drumming programme over the past eight years.

Graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2011 with Honours of the First Class, Craig has won prizes at some of the world’s most prestigious solo piping competitions as well as playing for, and accompanying, many top Grade 1 bands.

Craig also enjoys performing outside of the competition setting and has toured extensively with the Red Hot Chilli Pipers as well as performing at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and Glasgow.

So if you want to be part of this great competition, head over to our website and enter before midnight on Tuesday 19th April (that's just 6 days from now!) here 👉https://theclasp.co.uk/eventsinfo/live-online-7th-may-2022/

The next pipingclub.com workshop takes place tomorrow. A few new tunes for novice chanter/bagpipers. This will be a great session for anyone looking to learn their first strathspey and reel. All at an accessible pace from the comfort of your home! Sign up at www.pipingclub.com/workshops

Workshops Contact e-mail: [email protected]

🎶 Thanks to The National Piping Centre for having me to judge the U15s at the NPC junior competition.

Great playing on display - well done everyone. 🎶

It's our Junior Piping Competition tomorrow! We can't wait to see everyone here. The event will go ahead as scheduled, with the weather forecast improving. We would like to ask everyone who attends - competitors, parents/guardians, tutors - to be aware of our COVID-19 mitigations. Please read below - and see you tomorrow!

LFD Testing
Everyone that attends the NPC Junior Competition (competitors and family) is required to take an LFT, recording a negative result, before attending the event, unless exempt. If you do not have proof of a negative test or of exemption, then you will not be permitted access to the venue. You dont need to email or send anything to The National Piping Centre in advance.

On Friday evening/ Saturday morning, once you have completed the tests, you need to register them with the Government website. Then you will get an official text message or email to your own phone stating a negative result.
When you arrive at The NPC venue you will go to the registration desk to check in. There the registration person will ask to see your text or email. You need to bring your phone with the text or email copy to the event on the day to show at registration.

Please note that the test result must be a confirmation email AND NOT A NEGATIVE TEST CASSETTE. To reiterate - If you do not have proof of a negative test or of exemption, then you will not be permitted access to the venue.
We want to thank you in advance for complying with the testing, it helps the NPC event staff and other competitors on the day feel comfortable and allows us to run as COVID-safe an event as possible.

If you haven’t already been through this process on the Government website, we would suggest a trial run as the initial online registration process can be quite time consuming.Tests can be ordered online for free, or collected from most pharmacies.

On Arrival
When you arrive at the NPC venue for your event, please check in with the steward. This will allow us to know if you are competing, but also to ensure we have the correct name, mobile number and no. in your party which we need for track and trace, as well as check your LFT result emails.

Please allow longer than usual for this registration process.

In venue mitigations
When you are in your venue, we would ask that you wear a face covering (unless medically exempt) when not tuning up or performing.

There will be hand sanitizing and hand washing facilities throughout the venues for your use.

Cannot Attend?
If you find you cannot attend the event please email [email protected] or call 0141 353 0220 to let the team know.

🎶 Next Piping Club tune learning workshop for novice/intermediates on chanter or pipes, Saturday 26th February, 10.00am! 🎶

🎼 Tunes: Piper of Drummond, Campbeltown Kiltie Ball, The Shoe Collector. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Sign up at www.pipingclub.com/workshops 💻
Thanks to regular Carole for the 📸

A few unexpected days working from home has given me time to look through former pupil John Dew’s book of ‘Pipe Tunes’.

Congratulations, John. Particularly enjoying the Strath related tunes! Strathallan School

Well worth a look! 👀🎶

Last day of outreach work. Thanks to Corpus Christi Primary School for the welcome. What a great wee school! 🎶😀 Celtic Connections Strathallan School

Starting my Friday morning at Carmunnock Primary School for Celtic Connections outreach workshops before heading back up the A9 to Strathallan School to teach my own pupils. A busy January, but I can sleep at half term! 😀🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎶