New Gold Standard: a chat with 2025 Gold Medallists Steven Leask and Brodie Watson-Massey – Part 1

Winning a Highland Society of London Gold Medal at the Argyllshire Gathering at Oban or the Northern Meeting at Inverness places a piper’s name indelibly in the history books.

This year, two young pipers, Steven Leask and Brodie Watson-Massey, achieved the feat, placing them on an even bigger solo piping stage on October 25th when they compete at the 2025 Glenfiddich Championships.

[Remember to submit your prediction to the 2025 Pick the Glenfiddich Five contest for your opportunity to win a MacRae Blackwood Pipe Chanters and a Kintyre Blackwood Practice Chanter from McCallum Bagpipes!]

As with Jamie Forrester and Nick Hudson when they won their 2022 Gold Medals, we wanted to hear from Leask and Watson-Massey about their experiences on the way to, during and after their history-making performances.

But first, some background on these young pipers . . .

Steven Leask is from Irvine, Scotland, and now lives in East Kilbride with his partner, Sarah Muir, also one of the world’s greatest solo pipers. He began piping at 10 with instruction from John Easdale and Willie Gilmour, and has been taught by the legendary Willie McCallum for the last 15 years.

Even at 33, his competitive successes are numerous: fifth in the A-Grade MSR at the 2025 Northern Meeting, winner of the Open Piobaireachd and overall trophy at the 2025 Blair Atholl Games, the Open MSR at Blair Atholl three times (2025, 2024, 2022), the Open Piobaireachd at Inveraray Games in 2024, and the overall A-Grade winner at the Captain John MacLellan Memorial Championship in 2024, to name only a few.

Beginning at age 15, he was a member of Grade 1 Strathclyde Police for eight years, and more recently played with Grade 1 Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia until 2019.

He has a Masters degree in Architecture from the University of Strathclyde and now works as an architect in Glasgow.

Brodie Watson-Massey at age 22 is one of the youngest winners of a Highland Society of London Gold Medal, capturing the prize at Inverness on his first time in the event after winning the Silver Medal only the year before.

Originally from Edinburgh and now living in Glasgow, his first piping lessons were at George Heriot’s School, where he played in the school’s pipe band and served as pipe-major in his final year. He was also a longtime member of the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland, and now plays with the Grade 1 Inveraray & District, with which he won the 2024 World Championship.

He has received regular tuition from Colin MacLellan since 2017. In recent years, he has had instruction from Alasdair Henderson, Greig Canning, and Willie McIntyre.

His solo piping achievements also include the B-Grade overall at the 2024 Northern Meeting, the A-Grade MSR and A-Grade aggregate at the 2024 Scottish Piping Society of London competitions, and earning the overall Champion Piper trophy at the Atholl Gathering. He won the 2023 Lochnell Invitational Championship, the MacGregor Memorial Piobaireachd at the Argyllshire Gathering in 2021, and the 2019 Pipe Idol Competition at Piping Live! in 2019. In 2025, he won the SPA Open Piobaireachd and the Scots Guards Knockout Recital competitions.

While he completes his university degree, he’s working as a data scientist with Scottish Enterprise in Glasgow.

Here’s Part 1 of our discussion with 2025 Gold Medallists Steven Leask and Brodie Watson-Massey (and please forgive the minor audio problems):

A transcript of our discussion, with minor edits for written clarity.

pipes|drums: As we did a couple of years ago with Jamie Forrester and Nick Hudson, when they won their Highland Society of London Gold Medals, we wanted to do the same in 2025. So we have with us the Gold Medalists for 2025, Brodie Watson-Massey and Steven Leask. We thought we’d take some time to get to know them a little bit and talk about their experience since they won their big prizes.

Congratulations. Those are major prizes that will probably change your piping life forever. Steven, why don’t we start with you? Can you take us through the day? The tune up, the performance, the waiting, your feelings when you found out you’d won? Take us briefly through the day.

Steven Leask: Yeah, it’s quite interesting because I think Brodie and I chatted about the draw a couple of weeks before the Oban Gold Medal. I was saying that I was quite happy to get an early draw. I was on eighth, and I guess the main positive I saw was that you get up in the morning, you’re prepared, you go and have your tune, and then that’s out of the way.

The tune-up went well. I was quite happy with the pipes. The week leading up to the competition, the pipes had been behaving, so that always helps. I was happy with the tune selection I got [“The MacLeans’ March”]. It was one of my favourites. You try not to have favourites. On the medal list, you try to have them all equally prepared, but inevitably, you do have a favourite.

So I was generally happy with all of that, happy with how I played on the platform. And then I quickly tried to put it out of my head, if I’m honest. I think this was my fourth year playing in the Gold Medal. And the previous couple of times I’ve probably let it get to me, either having had bad tunes or bad performances or not performances that I was particularly happy with, and I’ve let them really get to me. So, this year I had it in my head that, regardless of the outcome, I would just put it out of my head. My partner, Sarah [Muir], also competes in the Gold Medal, so I changed the focus to support her when she was on later in the afternoon. That was probably my take on the morning.

pipes|drums: And Brodie, how about you? Your lead-up, tune-up, et cetera, and how you felt you played – those sorts of things.

Brodie Watson-Massey: My lead-up to the competition was largely the same, except there was one major difference: I was playing at the [Inverness] Civic Reception the night before. That kind of changed my practice routine, because I didn’t want to overplay my pipes before. I actually didn’t play them the day before until the Civic Reception in the evening, and then I was only playing them for about 10 or 15 minutes at that reception. But other than that, they were behaving well.

I drew fourteenth or fifteenth. I was right on the cusp of lunch, so I wasn’t too sure, and then somebody came and told me I would be first after lunch, which was good because I knew exactly when I was going to play. So that really helped with the tune-up and being able to kind of settle the nerves. And then the tune I got [“The Stewarts’ White Banner”] I was happy with. My piobaireachd high-G was going quite well, and some of my other tunes had the piobaireachd high-G in them, so I suppose there was a little bit of disappointment that I didn’t get one of those tunes. But I felt I just played the tune the way I would at home. And then, similar to Steven, I just tried to put it out of my mind. I actually went to the pub with Callum Brown straight after and stayed there for quite a wee while before returning to Eden Court.

To see my name was a shock, but not in the sense that I didn’t think I’d played well, but just the shock of the realization that, yeah, I’d won the Gold Medal. It was kind of overwhelming, actually. – Steven Leask

pipes|drums: How do you deal with nerves? Steven might have alluded to this. Do you expect the worst and be happy with the best? What’s your way of dealing with that kind of anxiety on the day?

Steven Leask: At Oban, the results are announced quite differently from Inverness. At Inverness, we’re all in one venue and typically in the last few years they’ve made a point of having an announcement, whether that be in the bar or in the main auditorium. Oban’s slightly different because we’re spread across the different venues. I was actually listening to Sarah play in the Former Winners’ MSR, and, again, I wasn’t even thinking about what time results would be out. I didn’t feel anxious about seeing what the result was.

Then just after Sarah had played, my phone went off, and it was Mike Fitzhenry, a fellow piper and longtime friend. He had sent a screenshot of the result, but all it had at that point was just the first place. To see my name was a shock, but not in the sense that I didn’t think I’d played well, but just the shock of the realization that, yeah, I’d won the Gold Medal. It was kind of overwhelming, actually. Just a lot of emotion at that point. I left the Argyllshire Gathering Hall and just felt as if I needed to have a bit of free space just to come to grips with it. It just so happened that when I turned the corner, Willie McCallum was walking up towards me. I’ve been going to Willie for probably close to 15 years now. So, it was quite a nice moment just to share the news with him. We were kind of overwhelmed by the whole thing, if I’m honest.

“Advice that’s piping-related but not actually about piping, would be to get involved with the piping community and be friends with everyone.” – Brodie Watson-Massey

pipes|drums: Brodie at Inverness they announce the prizes from fifth to first. Ater they announced second, did you think, “I think I’ve won this thing”?

Brodie Watson-Massey: Well, that’s a very quick moment, so I don’t think I can say that that passed through my mind. But I guess with it being my first year in the contest, I was just hoping for my name to be read out somewhere, because I felt I’d played well.

I went along early to Eden Court and listened to some friends playing in the morning, and I thought there were some really great performances. I heard Steven play, and he played really well. So, yeah, I was definitely shocked. The first thing I did once I was able to get out of the theatre was try to find my dad, because he always comes to these things. I remember looking across, trying to see him. Then I went out to the bar and he was there, and he was quite emotional. He was happy. We went outside and phoned my mum and a few other important people as well. So, yeah, it was just really nice experience.

pipes|drums: Brodie, you alluded to this first time competing and, at 22, you’re one of the youngest pipers in history to win the Gold Medal. What advice might you have for young pipers with strong competition ambitions?

Brodie Watson-Massey: Maybe advice that’s piping-related but not actually about piping, would be to get involved with the piping community and be friends with everyone. You’re here to make friends for life, and you want to be happy for your friends when they do well, and they’ll be happy for you when you do well. So that would be one really important piece of advice.

Something that I’ve kind of tried to do through the years is when I go to major gatherings and big events – Oban, Inverness, London, whatever it might be – there are all these top players playing. I really try to listen to as much as possible. You learn so much from listening live that you might not pick up on through recordings or videos or whatever it might be. I wouldn’t say it baffles me, but it definitely surprises me how few top pipers are there listening. For me, that’s where I do a lot of learning, and if you can take the little 1% from 10 pipers, then you’ll be 10% better, even if it’s just the way that they command the stage or tune up or the way they play a certain piece of technique.

Piobaireachd is a life study. It’s not something that you learn overnight. So, listen and try to listen well.

pipes|drums: Steven, how about you? Any advice? You’ve been at it four or five times, which is not a long time either, and you’re very young as well. What about your advice to younger pipers looking to improve?

Steven Leask: Similar to Brodie, the whole competing scene is full of your friends and peers? And you spend so much time doing that that you really have to enjoy being in the company of other people and socializing. I totally agree with Brodie that that has to be right up there for you to keep the motivation going.

I’ve been competing for quite a number of years now, and there are always points where you may have slightly less motivation, but being in a circle of friends and having that camaraderie when you do go to competitions, the socializing after playing, that helps. Ultimately, just enjoy your piping. I think that is one of the key things.

I don’t know if obsessed is the right word, but when I was younger, and I’m still like this, I just love listening to piping and traditional music. From a really young age, I would always be listening to the top players any time I was at a competition, going to the Glenfiddich to listen in the audience. And all the meetings and gatherings – just really lapping up the atmosphere, trying to learn as much as you can. But ultimately, you’ve just got to enjoy it; otherwise, there’s little motivation to keep going week after week competing.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our chat with the 2025 Highland Society of London Gold Medallists Steven Leask and Brodie Watson-Massey coming soon to a pipes|drums near you.