Piping Live! 2025: striking a balance between passionate performance and committed competition – Part 1

The Piping Live! Glasgow International Piping Festival was launched in 2003 as Piping Hot!, a few casual events staged by the relatively new Piping Centre. The primary purpose was to entertain the increasing number of pipers, drummers and enthusiasts coming to Glasgow for the World Pipe Band Championships.

Today, Piping Live! is by far the biggest piping festival in the world. It offers a sophisticated and eclectic mix of pure performance, peppered with several competitions over eight days.

Every new year brings a challenge for change to ensure the festival stays vibrant while satisfying the appetite for competition.

In addition to being the Director of Piping at the National Piping Centre, Finlay MacDonald is the Artistic Director of Piping Live!.

Along with his roles as the National Piping Centre’s Head of Piping Studies and the head of the Bachelor of Traditional Music (Piping) degree run by the Centre and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, John Mulhearn is Piping Live!’s Artistic Planning & Programming Director.

Working closely with Festival Manager Helen Urquhart, MacDonald and Mulhearn combine their entrenchment in Scottish Celtic folk music and competitive piping to develop eight days of programming designed to entertain, educate, enlighten and even thrill their audiences.

We met Finlay and John for a two-part discussion on highlights and changes on tap for Piping Live! 2025, as well as some of the challenges, issues and rewards accompanying the planning and production of the world’s biggest celebration of piping.

Here’s a transcription of Part 1, with minor edits for clarity.

Part 1

pipes|drums: It’s May 2025, and we’re really pleased to have Finlay MacDonald and John Mulhearn from Piping Live! They are both closely involved with the management of Piping Live!, the biggest festival of piping in the world. Finlay is the Artistic Director of Piping Live!, and John is the Artistic Planning & Programming Director.

The festival has been going on for a couple of decades now. What’s on tap for 2025? What are some of the highlights for this year’s Piping Live!?

Finlay MacDonald: You’re right. This will be the twenty-second edition of Piping Live!, so it’s crazy to think 21 down and the twenty-second to come. And I guess there will be a bit of a change this year, a bit of a coming of age, maybe, and the last few years. Obviously, during COVID, it was a different story. But as we came out of COVID, we weren’t quite sure where things were going to go and how people were going to react, but we found last year was really kind of busier than we’d been in any other year previously, even pre-COVID, especially around the Centre, with the Street Cafe.

Anyone who’s been to Piping Live! will remember the two tents around the front. But the reality was that last year, we needed a bigger tent, or we needed bigger tents, because they were filling to capacity quickly. It was a slightly awkward L shape. I’ve been thinking about this for a few years, and I’d thought about turning the whole thing around and having the stage right in front of the Centre, leaning against the building between the front door and the door to the Tryst restaurant. We’re putting in a covered outdoor stage that opens up the whole stair area in the front to become like a natural amphitheatre for the gig that’s on.

And we’ve got bits of cover to shield everyone from the glorious sunshine, not from the rain! But we’re going for a much more open-air festival feel. The festival site will be the whole area in front of the Centre, with the flat piece on top. And around the side, we’re going to have a marquee, which we’re calling the Bothy Tent, with a more acoustic-based, slightly quieter, more chilled-out vibe.

Around the main stage, what we call the Centre Stage, will be a lot of the stuff that people know and love: the Pipe Idol competition, international artists, and the Emerging Talent stage. That allows us to finish every day with a headliner. We’ve got some of the top traditional bands playing on that Centre Stage to finish off each day.

On top of that, on the other side of the building, we have a really cool bar area with different and more food offerings, making it feel more like a proper outdoor festival.

“The new layout has opened up more opportunities. We’ve got a headliner for each day, mainly up-and-coming young artists doing new and exciting things in traditional music.” – John Mulhearn

pipes|drums: That sounds like a major change to the festival’s setup and format. It’s going to be exciting to see that. John, considering your bailiwick is programming, what are some of the acts you’re most excited to see coming to Piping Live! 2025?

John Mulhearn: The idea of having two stages outside, whereas in the past we’ve had one stage, has opened up a lot more programming for us and more options for the type of programming we do, which is a bit of a breath of fresh air. We felt slightly staid with the format when we’re sitting in programming meetings in recent years. Indeed, this new layout has opened up more opportunities. As Finlay said, we’ve got a headliner for each day, mainly up-and-coming young artists doing new and exciting things in traditional music.

For instance, we’ve got Marlon Lewis. Marlon’s making quite cutting-edge, exciting pipe music. For a more West Coast feel, we’ve also got Beinn Lee, which is emerging and popular – what would you call it? — Celtic rock? It’s something you see across festivals Scotland-wide, the growing popularity of bands with a kind of West Highland feel to their music.

And amongst those, the usual things like Pipe Idol. It’s invigorated our conversations about the festival. We’re really excited about it.

pipes|drums: Considering Piping Live! originated, and still takes advantage of, the World Pipe Band Championships and all those competitive pipers and drummers coming in and liking the competition side of things, how do you balance between pure performance and the more competitive, traditional pipe band style of content?

“We do have to try to reach that balance. If we just did a whole week of competitions, then it’s just the same thing again.” – Finlay MacDonald

Finlay MacDonald: As we said earlier, we’re now in the twenty-second year of the festival. When Roddy MacLeod and Alberto Laidlaw started the festival, it was a celebration of all different kinds of piping, whether competition piping and pipe bands, international acts playing indigenous pipes, or the more folk, traditional stuff that we’re doing.

There’s always been that blend. As John and I were talking about recently, competition is so inherent and so baked in to Scottish piping that it’s hard to separate that. I think we do have to try to reach that balance. If we just did a whole week of competitions, then it’s just the same thing again.

But even the competitions we have, the Masters Solo Piping, for example, has become one of the biggest and most popular on that level. Then something like the International Quartets are a bit different, a wee bit more freedom for the bands. And then the Alasdair Gillies Memorial is a recital-challenge, rather than a three-judges-on-the-pen competition.

But we have to balance that with the cool and newer that we try to push every year – the new music, the creation of new music, understanding and bringing in and opening to musicians from all over the world. It’s a balance. The reality is that lots of pipers and drummers are here for the World’s. They love competition, so we shouldn’t exclude them from doing that. But it’s about balancing and trying to get that mix right.

One thing I found really cool last year was that on the Monday we had the Masters on in the Centre, but at the same time, we had a gig at Nice N Sleazy, a great, grungy underground venue on Sauchiehall Street. That was full for this cool newer artist, Bede Patterson from Australia, and Fionnlagh Mac A Phiocair from the Highlands, playing really cutting-edge contemporary music. That’s great, because it’s that balance on both sides.

Not jumping the gun, but one of the things I’m really looking forward to this year is that we’ve managed to get a Ukrainian band over to play Ukrainian pipes. That’s going to be really quite special. The guys playing had to get special permission to leave their army duties to come and represent Ukraine at the Festival. So that’s something we’re delighted about.

pipes|drums: That sounds fantastic. Other music festivals like Glastonbury or Coachella have different stages for different tastes. It seems like Piping Live! is taking that strategy. Piping Live! is obviously a massive undertaking. Are you already planning for 2026, or does that start the day after the 2025 festival?

Finlay MacDonald: Helen Urquhart, Festival Manager, would tell you that it’s literally a non-stop project we’re constantly thinking. There’s a big review after a wee bit of stepping back from the festival. But come September, October, we’re looking at acts for the next year and the shape of the festival. It’s kind of non-stop and all year round.

pipes|drums: As we’re seeing, Piping Live! grows every year, and creativity is key.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Piping Live! discussion with Artistic Director Finlay MacDonald and John Mulhearn, Artistic Planning & Programming Director.