Isle of Skye, UK · Scottish smallpipes · drone

Brìghde Chaimbeul

1 upcoming festival

Skye's smallpipes visionary — ancient Scottish drones made hypnotic and new, minimalist reeds that sit closer to modern drone music than trad-session nostalgia.

Brìghde Chaimbeul is a piper from the Isle of Skye who plays the Scottish smallpipes, a bellows-blown instrument quieter and sweeter-toned than the Highland pipes. She grew up in a Gaelic-speaking family and came to wider attention through competition and traditional music circles before making records that treat the instrument's constant drone as a compositional element in its own right. Her playing draws on Scottish and Irish repertoire alongside piping traditions from Eastern Europe, and the results often have more in common with minimalist and drone music than with conventional session performance. She has recorded and performed with other players from the experimental end of folk and improvised music.

Scottish smallpipesdrone