John Dew marches on with new album, “Na Caismeachdan”
Originally from Crieff, Scotland, and now living in Glasgow, John Dew has a bachelor’s degree in traditional music from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He has been making a career as a music composer, arranger, and producer, in between playing with the Grade 1 Inveraray & District and vying for top solo piping awards.
He just revealed that his third album, Na Caismeachdan (pronounced “nah KASH-myuhk-dan” in Gaelic, meaning “The Marches” in English) is 100% dedicated to the March idiom, likely making it the first full-length commercial recording with a sole focus on one type of light music.
What began as a four-track EP morphed into a full album of original compositions and arrangements.

“Every track on the album explores a different march idiom and time signature,” Dew said.
The 10-track album explores multi-layered bagpipe and whistle composition, including “Red Castle,” a film score–style track that will be released as a single digitally on August 1st, and available now for pre-order.
“The track was composed with a string ensemble, effectively crossing boundaries between genres in an effort to fuse classical music with neo-traditional music. This is me trying to show my diversity as a composer, looking deeper into musical arrangements below the surface of the melody. Similarly, the entire album is almost exclusively bagpipes/whistles and grand piano —something I feel is not as common.”
Dew said that many of the tunes on Na Caismeachdan are published in his 2023 Pipe Tunes music collection, along with several new compositions.
Here’s a taste of the album, with “The Ruins of Gylen Castle”
Audio PlayerNa Caismeachdan will be launched at the Piping Live! festival on August 12th, and copies of the album have already been distributed to outlets for distribution. Physical copies are available for pre-order at Dew’s website, with the code “10%OFF” for a 10% discount, and streaming versions will be on Bandcamp, Apple Music, iTunes and Spotify.
Dew’s 2021 EP, The High Bridge Walk, was followed by Pipe Tunes and, also in 2021, he brought out his first full-length commercial recording, Mackerel Sky and Pipe Suites, a digital collection. He has composed several short film music scores, including “What Separates Us from the Beasts,” which received three Royal Television Society awards. He arranged and composed the strings for the title track of Inveraray & District’s 2022 “A Night in that Land” concert.
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