Piping Live! receives honour from 2010 Scottish Event Awards
An estimated 30,000 fans of piping and drumming came to the 2009 Piping Live! Festival in Glasgow last August, and the popularity and growth of the event was recognized on September 9th when the festival was named the “Best Large Event” of the year by the annual Scottish Event Awards.
The festival also received commendation in two other categories, Best Cultural Event and Best Traditional Event. The winners were announced at a gala at the recently refurbished Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow, attended by more than 300 of Scotland’s event organisers. Nominations were judged by a panel of events industry professionals.
“We are delighted to have won Best Large Event and also to have been commended twice at such a prestigious awards ceremony,” said Alberto Laidlaw, director of the National Piping Centre. “2009 was a great year for Piping Live! and this year we saw it take another leap forward with a programme that was bigger than ever.”
Piping Live! was up against, among other events, the British Open Golf Championship, to take the top prize
The Piping Live! Glasgow International Piping Festival made its debut in 2003, taking advantage of the influx of pipers and drummers and their family and friends visiting Glasgow for the World Pipe Band Championships. Before Piping Live!, members of non-UK bands would spend five or more days with little more to do than practice and anxiously await the competition.
Piping Live maybe the single reason that the World’s is sure to never leave Scotland. Where else will you be able to find world class musicians playing on their lunch break for an entire week? And the Peruvian panpipe bands in Central Station do not count. Good Job to Piping Live.