Barnaby Brown

Barnaby is dedicated to revealing the ancient artistic traditions of Scotland’s music. Born and raised in Glasgow, he leads the revival of the northern triplepipe, the precursor of the bagpipe in Britain and Ireland. He also champions the art of canntaireachd, the mouth music of the Highland bagpipe, and has been reproducing historic bagpipe chanters with Julian Goodacre since 1998. He plays pibroch on a reproduction of a chanter owned by the Blind Piper of Gairloch (1656–1754). His blend of historical and ethnographic musical materials has led to repeat engagements at the Edinburgh International Festival, Galway Early Music Festival, Scène nationale d’Orléans, Spitalfields Festival, William Kennedy Piping Festival, St Albans International Organ Festival and Celtic Connections. Between 2006 and 2012 he lectured at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and he has taught on the BA Scottish Music (Piping) programme at the National Piping Centre. His passion for giving a contemporary voice to ancient instruments has led to four projects with Delphian Records: In Praise of Saint Columba: the sound world of the Celtic Church (2014), Spellweaving: ancient music from the Highlands of Scotland (2016), Set upon the Rood: new music for choir & ancient instruments (2017) and Apollo & Dionysus: sounds from Classical Antiquity (2018). The first two were informed by his doctoral research on Hebridean piping at the University of Cambridge. Recently, he began exploring pipes reproduced from Ancient Greek, Sumerian and Paleolithic finds.