Folk, Jazz, Etc: Plockton trad music centre marks ten years as former pupil Daniel takes BBC award

ANYONE enjoying Sunday night's finals of the 2010 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year award, either in Glasgow's City Halls or listening to the live broadcast, may or may not have noted that the winner, 23-year-old Inverurie fiddler Daniel Thorpe, was a former pupil of the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music

– which, like the Radio Scotland awards themselves, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

The centre – or to use its Gaelic name, Sgoil Chiil na Gidhealtachd – holds two open days for prospective pupils and their families this Friday and Saturday. It was established in 2000 at Plockton High School in Wester Ross, which already had credentials in terms of piping teaching, not to mention the great Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean as a former headmaster.

The picturesque west Highland village – hitherto famed for nothing more notable than a laid-back TV policeman by the name of Hamish Macbeth – could now boast one of four national centres of excellence in music within Scotland's state education sector, the other three being Douglas Academy in Milngavie, the City of Edinburgh Music School and Dyce Academy, Aberdeen.

Ten years on, the Centre seems to be flourishing – as forcibly demonstrated by a bunch of its pupils who supported the TMSA Young Trad Tour at Celtic Connections last Saturday.

"My kids gave the best performance any group has given in the history of this institution," declares Dougie Pincock, director of the Centre.

And he sounds similarly enthusiastic about former pupil Thorpe's achievement the following day at the Radio Scotland awards.

"To see Daniel knocking off the award was just great," he says.

As he talks, Pincock – who has enjoyed his own moments in the limelight as a former piper with the Battlefield Band – has between 15 and 20 serious applications on his desk for places at the Centre, whose tutors include such renowned exponents as accordionist Sandy Brechin, piper Iain MacFadyen and fiddler Iain MacFarlane.

"We audition in March, then do an induction week in June (when the prospective students board, as they would if accepted]. At the end of that induction week, I sit down with them and we discuss whether they're going to come back or not."

Due to the centre's situation, explains Pincock, some 60 per cent of its intake tend to come from the Highlands, Argyllshire or the North-East, "although we've had quite a few people from the Borders." Here he cites Border guitarist and fiddler Innes Watson, who accompanied Thorpe in his award-winning set.

Another former student, guitarist Ewan Robertson, won the Radio Scotland award two years ago, while other notable former pupils include accordionist and piper Mairearad Green and members of the acclaimed young band Bodega.

Over the past few years, the Sgoil Chiil has been working with the Scottish Qualifications Authority with a view to developing its own specific qualification, "and we're hopeful that, over the next couple of years we can develop it to the point where we can award a national certificate in traditional music – a wee bit of educational fast-tracking which will give them something unique to here and unique to traditional music".

The educational establishment, he adds, has had to sit up and take notice of the Centre, "because we're turning out Daniel Thorpes, and Ewan Robertsons and Bodegas".

In the meantime, the still-elated Thorpe, who like numerous Plockton pupils went on to take the Scottish music degree course at the RSAMD in Glasgow, paid tribute to his time at the centre of excellence: "You couldn't have asked for more, in terms of the opportunities it gave you and the chance to just sit down and play as much music as you could. To be in a setting like that with so many like-minded people was just wonderful."

• For details of the centre, log on to www.musicplockton.org or tel: [phone].