Piping Live! 2015 unveils program; tickets now on sale

It’s billed as “the world’s biggest week of piping” (in actuality, it’s the world’s only week of piping), and the full schedule of events for this year’s Piping Live! Glasgow International Piping Festival was made public, with tickets now on sale.

The August 10-16 festival expects to draw more than 50,000 to Glasgow to for the more than 200 events featuring at least 8,000 performers, including many of the pipe bands that will be competing at the World Championships on the Friday and Saturday. Just a few highlights:

The Masters Solo Piping Competition kicks off Piping Live! on Monday, with the world’s elite pipers competing for the prizes and also a spot at the 2015 Glenfiddich Championships in October. The first round of the ever-popular Pipe Idol contest also starts that day, featuring young players from Scotland, Canada, Northern Ireland and Australia.

The festival gets into even fuller swing on Tuesday. Of course the marquee event is Pipes+Drums, organized by pipes|drums Magazine, featuring pipe-majors and leading-drummers performing in an informal recital at the Street Café at the National Piping Centre. The free event at noon will have duets from ScottishPower, Shotts & Dykehead, Simon Fraser University and the Stuart Highlanders. Double 2014 Gold Medallist Douglas Murray will be in recital at 1 pm at the Piping Centre, and the ever-popular International Quartets Competition is that night, featuring foursomes from Grade 1 bands getting a lot of nerve-jangling in before the World’s.

Wednesday is something of a ceol mor day at Piping Live! At noon the Piobaireachd Society launches Book 16 of its century-old Collection, and then at 2:30 the National Piping Centre will unveil a book on how to play that kind of pipe music, with the debut of its . . .