5. Dr Angus MacDonaldA’Sireadh Spòrs

I wanted to choose this as an ode to all the recitals I used to go to. Dr Angus taught me on the highland pipes for a couple of years when I was a bit older. When you come from the world of highland piping it can be quite restrictive. There are people who think you should only play in a certain style, or sound a certain way, but Dr Angus was always one to encourage personal musical styles. I think that’s really important to hear as a growing, learning musician. [Learning under him] there was a lot more questioning of the things I was hearing in competitions and things like that. You might think that to be successful you just need to go with what everyone’s doing and play in a certain way, but Dr Angus was always one to gently guide without saying ‘you must do this and that’. He was also a very thoughtful piper, there was a lot of going through manuscripts, analysing the backgrounds of stories. It’s important not to just play the tunes, but to also think about where they come from.