PICK UP THE PIPES

Even just 25 years ago, the conventional route to learning the bagpipes was to do so through your local pipe band, or – if you could – your local Boys’ Brigade pipe band.

“If you go right back in history, to the turn of the 20th century, the Boys’ Brigade had, in the Glasgow area alone, about 130 pipe bands,” explains John Mulhearn, head of piping studies at the National Piping Centre in the city.

That’s difficult to comprehend now, he admits, but not because of a general loss of interest in learning the Highland bagpipes. Quite the opposite: most