Folk, Jazz, etc: Seudan, bagpipe-led quartet

AS GLASGOW counts down to the acoustic tumult of the World Pipe Band Championships on 13 August, with its week long Piping Live! festival, a unique bagpipe ensemble is releasing its first recording, in a project which not only re-connects Highland piping with its pre-military roots, but is the result of a major craft exercise.

Seudan - the name is Gaelic for jewels or treasures, will launch its eponymously titled album at Glasgow's Piping Centre on 12 August, as part of Piping Live's extensive programme of concerts, recitals, lectures and competitions. The core quartet comprises pipers Calum MacCrimmon, Angus MacKenzie, Fin Moore and Angus Nicolson, augmented by piper, singer and piping scholar Allan MacDonald, while further guests feature on the album.

The pipes played by the quartet were made specifically for them by Fin Moore and his father and business partner Hamish, and were modelled on an 18th century example, "the Black set of Kintail", in Inverness Museum. The result is not only a playing style that seeks to regain Highland pipe music's one-time relationship with Gaelic song and dance, but also a more mellow, full-toned sound as the reproduction pipes play in the key of A, rather than the shriller B flat that is standard among today's instruments.

It was Hamish Moore who came up with the concept of Seudan (pronounced "shaytan"), back in 1991. Moore, who played a significant role in the revival of Scotland's bellows-blown pipes, was also interested in Highland culture and approached Hugh Cheape, piping expert and at that time a curator at the National Museums of Scotland, to ask if he could recommend an 18th-century set of pipes which Moore could measure up with a view to creating a copy.

Cheape suggested the Black Set of Kintail and Moore, with help from flute-maker Rod Cameron, created a reproduction set, which he played on his 1994 album Stepping on the Bridge. He recalls "What was interesting was that, when we stuck drone reeds in the pipes, they naturally wanted to play in A." During the 20th century the standard pitch of Highland pipes steadily rose to B flat and beyond, as bands strove to sound louder and brighter. The reproduced 18th-century set reverted to a much mellower pitch.

In 2003, Moore was involved in forming a group he called Na Tr Seudan - "the three Treasures", in reference to the music, song and dance of Gaeldom which he felt had lost touch with each other.

It made its debut at Celtic Connections with fiddlers and step dancers. The project then subsided for a while: "While trying to make a living making pipes it's difficult to go and do more pipe-making in your spare time," he laughs.However, with the help of the Scottish Arts Council, he and Fin have completed eight sets of the reproduction pipes, made in ebony, with their elegant, chalice-style drone tops mounted in silver by the Dunblane-based silversmith Graham Stewart (who made the Three Honours sculpture for the Scottish parliament).

So the pipes both look and sound good, and are indicative of the recently re-cultivated diversity of Scottish piping, which underlies the Piping Live! festival itself.

Diversity of style, under the fingers of four distinctive players, is also the hallmark of a piping concert Moore has organised this Sunday afternoon in the acoustically and visually spectacular setting of Lennoxlove Castle, Haddington. It features two members of Seudan, Angus Nicolson on reel pipes and Allan MacDonald on Highland pipes, as well as Iain MacInnes on Scottish small pipes and Paul Roberts on Border pipes.

• Seudan is out now on Greentrax Recordings. Piping Live! runs from 8-14 August. See www.pipinglive.co.uk. For details of the Lennoxlove piping concert, visit www.hamishmoore.com