YOU have to admire the pluck of a city-based music festival that not only goes head-to-head with Edinburgh's giant August jamboree, less than 50 miles away, but does so during the season when most other live music is being heard somewhere more bucoli
c. After five years in existence, however, Glasgow's Piping Live! event certainly seems to be holding its own. Its timing is primarily determined by that of the annual World Pipe Band Championships on Glasgow Green, which took place on Saturday, with the festival running throughout the preceding week. After all, when you've got some 8,000 pipers and drummers – including, by definition, many of the world's very best – descending on Glasgow from 16 countries, and up to 40,000 people turning out to watch them compete, it makes shrewd sense to capitalise on this pool of both musicians and enthusiasts.
As the festival has evolved, its key trait has become a mix of events aimed variously at hard-core piping devotees, the general folk music audience and the city-centre populace at large. Twice-daily free performances in George Square – albeit somewhat dampened by the Glaswegian summer weather – included slots by many of the top names involved, among them the renowned Asturian outfit Llan de Cubel, Northumbrian icon Kathryn Tickell and Canada's Simon Fraser University Pipe Band, who went on to claim the coveted top prize at Saturday's contest, pushing the Field Marshal Montgomery squad, victors for the past two years, into second place. Then there was the tented Street Café outside the National Piping Centre, which lured the passing public with more free music and an al fresco (but undercover) bar during the afternoon and early evenings.
Alongside such outreach-style events, the bagpipes' more specialist aficionados could indulge themselves with numerous recitals and competitions focusing on the instrument in its unadulterated state, while the main evening concerts showcased the diverse ways in which it's been incorporated into the wider currents of today's international folk scene.
Friday's theme was the bagpipes' diversity in the numerous countries where they're found, and while a points failure outside Waverley Station sadly precluded hearing the young Bulgarian exponent Ivan Georgiev, I was there in time to catch Italy's Ecletnica Pagus, a somewhat inelegantly named – to British ears – but aurally arresting six-piece from the southern region of Molise, a particular stronghold of the wind-blown Italian bagpipe called the zampogna. Fitted with a chanter and a single drone, the latter modulated by the player's left hand, it creates a reedy, slightly twangy sound reminiscent of the Breton bombarde, but with richer chordal tones, combined here with accordion, harp, oboe, bass clarinet and percussion. Drawing on traditions stretching back centuries, while infused with an inventiveness reflected in this unusual, melody-rich instrumentation, the band's arrangements of dance tunes and slower, ballad-like pieces comprised a vibrantly layered mix of harmonic colour, rhythmic vitality and classical elegance.
Uilleann piper Robbie Hannan and veteran Donegal fiddler Paddy Glackin are two of the most revered names in Irish traditional music today, not least thanks to the latter's place in the original Bothy Band line-up. Whether it was the evidently punishing heat of the stage lights, however – with Hannan's pleas for them to be turned down going unheeded – or simply an older-school style of presentation, their set seemed strangely flat and undynamic in character, despite the palpably outstanding prowess of both players.
No such quibbles with Breabach's performance, however, as the young Scottish quartet rang optimum changes on an instrumental line-up that includes two sets of Highland pipes, flute, whistles, fiddle, guitar and vocals, plus Donal Brown's excellent step-dancing.
A late start and ScotRail schedules again meant missing much of Saturday's After World's Shindig, staged somewhat ambitiously in the Barrowland, presumably in anticipation of the kilted legions descending from Glasgow Green, whereas in the event the vast ballroom space was sadly underfilled. The resulting heavy echo, and the prevailing talkative mood among those who were there, did the performers few favours. The show none the less whetted the appetite for a better opportunity to hear the Vallely Brothers, including three members of the famously musical Armagh family – uilleann piper Cillian, concertina virtuoso Niall and pianist Caoimhín – alongside guitarist Paul Meehan and bodhrán player Brian Morrissey.
Despite sharing two members – and a penchant for muscular rhythmic attack – with the band Lúnasa, the differences in instrumentation produced a highly distinctive sound, centred on the brilliantly close-knit sparring between Cillian and Niall.
