A chat with Stuart Liddell about “Garron,” his new studio recording out now

There’s something charming about a compact disc, those crazy things from a seeming bygone era, the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Like vinyl records, you could pick them up, put them on, read and memorize the liner notes, stick them in the car stereo, and play them again and again.

Like those bygone CD days, great solo pipers would be featured regularly on full-length, professionally made, commercial recordings recorded in an actual recording studio.

Stuart Liddell is, without doubt, one of the greatest all-round pipers in history. Since late October 2025, he is the first piper/pipe-major to hold both the Glenfiddich Championship and the World Pipe Band Championship simultaneously.

Garron is the name of his new recording, currently available on CD from StuartLiddell.com. The album features 15 tracks spanning every musical genre of the Highland pipes and more.

It’s his second commercial solo recording, coming two decades after the release of Inveroran, which has been hailed as one of the best solo piping recordings ever made.

For Garron, Liddell asked Luke Slater to design the cover and Cailean Maclean to write the comprehensive sleeve notes, as they both did for Inveroran.

Miraculously, we were able to connect with Stuart Liddell for a chat about Garron in between a teaching trip to New Zealand, performing at Celtic Connections, looking after Inveraray & District, and preparing to depart for a week of teaching and playing at the Celtic Arts Foundation’s Winter School in Seabeck, Washington.

We could have spent all day listening to his music and comments, but here’s the first part of our brief conversation:

And for those who prefer reading, here’s a transcript of the first part of our chat.

pipes|drums: It’s January 2026, and we are really pleased to be with Stuart Liddell. Stuart needs little introduction. Everybody around the world knows him as the pipe-major of the World Champion Inveraray & District. Stuart’s coming to us from Inveraray, Scotland, back at home just for a brief stop in before he heads out to yet another piping workshop/recital destination. So, , thanks, Stuart. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Stuart Liddell: Thanks for having us.

pipes|drums: First, congratulations on being pipes|drums’ 2025 New Year’s Honours trifecta winner: Pipe Band of the Year, Piper of the Year, and Solo Competition Piper of the Year. You won all three of those awards from our panel of voters. Congrats again on that.

Stuart Liddell: Honoured. Thank you.

pipes|drums: We wanted to talk about your new CD, Garron, which is a rarity these days: an actual compact disc by a top solo player, made in the studio. First, what does “garron” mean?

Stuart Liddell: Garron is the name of the house I live in in Inveraray here. It’s Garron Bridge House. There’s an old bridge across the road, built in 1743, and the River Garron, a very short river just outside Inveraray. So, the idea was just to name it after the place that I live.

The CD I did way back in 2006 was named for my house when I was just a young boy living in Inveroran. Inveroran is the name of the last CD recording.

pipes|drums: So it’s a bit of continuity then with places that you’ve been to and lived. Who produced Garron?

Stuart Liddell: I teach a person called Lady Jane MacRae online. She’s new to piping, but she’s got many contacts, one being a man called Tom Hye from Belgium, and David Alexander from a company called Ronheim. Together, they helped sponsor and create the opportunity for me to record the album. The album was recorded in Houffalize, Belgium. It’s in the middle of the countryside and a cracking studio, just a lovely big window, which you don’t see very often in a studio. You can see out onto the scenery and everything else. There’s no outside noise to disturb what you’re doing.

So, that’s how all that came about; it was an opportunity through Lady Jane MacRae.

pipes|drums: And you put it out on physical compact disc. But will other formats be available for download or on Spotify and Apple Music?

Stuart Liddell: Yes, things move quite slowly here in Argyll. It’s a thing called “Argyll time.” The actual recording took place in April 2024, and this is us finally getting the hard copy out into the piping world. The idea is to also produce a vinyl copy and also a music pack to accompany the recordings as well for anyone who wants to learn the dots as it were. And digitally, that’s the aim as well. Down the line we’ll definitely aim to put it in a digital format.

pipes|drums: What about dealers? It’s available on your website, but is it also being sent to dealers around the world?

Stuart Liddell: Yes, but we haven’t got into that yet. It is available at Stuart Liddell.com. That’s the starting point anyway. We’ll see where it goes from there.

Stuart Liddell: Sure. The first would be a set of hornpipes. These are traditional tunes arranged by Alen Tully, pipe-major of the St. Laurence O’Toole Pipe Band: “Highland Wedding” and “The Cameronian Rant.” Many years ago, at a party, at Alen’s family home – his mum and dad’s home. We just sort of were jamming, and he came up with the idea of playing these tunes, and it was incredible – mind-blowing. It felt like a set of tunes I really wanted to learn and play.

It’s a very X-rated set. Traditionalists among us might not be so keen on it, but it does demonstrate how effective the embellishments that we have in our instrument are rhythmically. And they certainly are to the fore here on this track.

pipes|drums: Nice. Okay, so see if we can, through the magic of technology, bring it up:

pipes|drums: We’ll pause it there. What’s going through your mind while you’re playing? Are in remote control, on autopilot?

Stuart Liddell: It is kind of autopilot, yeah. I don’t know, it’s a good question. I’m trying to think back to the recording. As I said earlier, the recording studio. I’ve played in a few studios over the years and they’re usually quite, what I’d describe as dry, and quite hard to get the feel of the tunes you’re playing. But I didn’t really feel that at this studio in Belgium then.

“What’s going through your mind? I think I’m just treating it just like a recital and just play. It is kind of automatic pilot to a point, but also, as I’m listening back, I’m hoping that I haven’t missed anything. There are quite a few gracenotes going on.”

The engineer, Frank Van Bogaert, I don’t think he’d done much in the way of recording, but I thought he captured the sound really, really well, and the ambience of the room was good. Plus, we had about three people in the room itself.

Back to your question, What’s going through your mind? I think I’m just treating it just like a recital and just play. It is kind of automatic pilot to a point, but also, as I’m listening back, I’m hoping that I haven’t missed anything. There are quite a few gracenotes going on.

pipes|drums: Shall we keep rolling with it or? Wanna keep rolling?

Stuart Liddell: Yeah, it’s almost at the end.

pipes|drums: Great stuff.

Stuart Liddell: Thank you.

pipes|drums: Any more thoughts on that? The bottom-hand work, the crans you throw in: really impressive.

Stuart Liddell: Thank you. I have a lot of fun playing that. Alen Tully is just an absolute wizard with arrangements and compositions. It’s just a lot of fun to play these tunes. I’ve been playing them for a number of years now. Usually, I play them to warm up the fingers and then go play a set of 3/4s or something. But it’s great fun to play, great rhythmic effect.

Stay tuned to pipes|drums for more with Stuart Liddell discussing Garron, his new solo recording available now at StuartLiddell.com, coming soon.

A correction was made on Jan. 30, 2025: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the location of the Celtic Arts Foundation’s Winter School as Seabrook, Washington. The correct name of the town is Seabeck.