Piping Live! – Wednesday 10th August 2022

The Society will be once again taking part in this year’s Piping Live! festival. The show is called Ye Heilans an ye Lawlans and promises to be an entertaining evening comprising two distinct halves featuring Harta and the Matt Seattle Band.

The Matt Seattle Band, who will be well known to members (featuring pipes, accordion, fiddle and percussion), will debut Matt’s Gala Water Suite, his beautiful musical tribute to the river that runs south from the Moorfoot Hills in Midlothian to Galashiels where it enters the Tweed. Please see below for more information about the Band.

The Matt Seattle Band. Photo by Philip Whitaker.

Harta, the Skye and Lochalsh based trio, play a mix of old Scottish melodies and dance tunes alongside music drawn from the Nordic traditions. The band comprises piper and maker Ross Calderwood on smallpipes; Christine Martin on nyckelharpa; and legendary Scottish folk musician Jack Evans on guitar, bouzouki, and whistles.

Harta at Ashaig.

The show – which takes place on the evening of Wednesday, 10th August at The National Piping Centre – opens with a set from two very talented Royal Conservatoire of Scotland students, Dougals McKiggan and Finlay MacVicar.

Tickets for in-person and online viewing can be purchased via the Piping Live! website https://pipinglive.co.uk/events/lbps-presents-ye-heilans-an-ye-lawlans

The Matt Seattle Band

The Matt Seattle Band was formed in 2008 with Matt (Border pipes), Donald Knox (guitar and mandolin), Lewis Powell-Reid (accordion, guitar and cittern) and Frazer Watson (percussion).

In 2010 they recorded their début album Reivers of the Heart featuring their Thomas the Rhymer Suite, and they'll soon be putting the finishing touches to their second album.
Morag Brown (fiddle) joined them in 2016, and Jenni Borthwick (fiddle) now joins them for their Piping Live! concert, with LBPS Convenor Stuart Letford guesting on Scottish smallpipes.

They all live in the Scottish Borders, and as well as playing in Borders festivals and village halls they've performed in Edinburgh, Glasgow (twice at Òran Mór) and Dumfries and Galloway.

They're looking forward to their Piping Live! concert which will feature Matt's Gala Water Suite. Composed during lockdown in 2020, it consists of 14 new tunes framed by 2 traditional airs, all inspired by locations mentioned in the pre-Robert-Burns lyrics to Braw Lads o Gala Water.