Brìghde Chaimbeul

Scottish piper Brìghde Chaimbeul is known for her experimental approach to traditional music as well as her own minimalist, drone-based compositions. Hailed as one of the most promising players of her generation, she is one of the few women to achieve success in the male-dominated world of piping. After winning the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award, she released her debut album, The Reeling, in 2019. Subsequent projects saw her collaborating outside the folk world with artists like Colin Stetson, Gruff Rhys, and Caroline Polachek while developing her own unique hybrid on solo albums like 2023's Carry Them with Us and 2025's Sunwise. Born in 1999 and brought up in Sleat on the Isle of Skye, Chaimbeul, a native Gaelic speaker, grew up in a musical family. She learned to play both piano and fiddle before taking up the pipes at the age of seven, inspired by the legendary piper Rona Lightfoot, the first woman to ever win a major piping championship. She studied with Niall Stewart and won her first competition at the age of ten. In 2014 Chaimbeul discovered the relatively underused Scottish smallpipes, which became her instrument of choice with their sweet, clear, high-pitched sound. Her big break came in 2016 when she won the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award; the following year, she was nominated in the "Up and Coming" category at the Scots Trad Music Awards. She began playing live in a trio with Innes White (guitar) and her sister Mairi Chaimbeul on clarsach (Scottish harp), appearing at many major piping and folk festivals, and became a frequent collaborator with piper Ross Ainslie. A bursary from the Saltire Society allowed her to undertake an ethnomusicological tour of Bulgaria, studying the country's rich piping tradition; she was also influenced by Scandinavian and Cape Breton styles. Consisting largely of ancient and forgotten traditional tunes, she released her 2019 debut album, The Reeling, on River Lea. Featuring Lau fiddler Aidan O'Rourke and Lankum's Radie Peat on concertina, and recorded in the historic East Church in Cromarty in the Scottish Highlands, it had an experimental flavor and raw, murky production. Over the next few years Chaimbeul continued to develop her distinctive, often unconventional approach, while keeping one foot in traditional music. She and fellow small piper Ross Ainslie released a trio album, LAS, with guitarist Steven Byrnes in 2022. A year later, she issued her adventurous second solo album, Carry Them with Us, on the experimental German label Tak:til. Though billed as a solo record, it featured prominent contributions from avant-garde saxophonist Colin Stetson on most of its tracks. That same year Chaimbeul crossed over into the pop world after being featured on Caroline Polachek's breakout album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. After several years touring alone, she opted for a more minimalist solo approach on her third full-length album. Sunwise, released in 2025, consisted almost entirely of original material thematically based around ritualistic and cyclical structures. ~ John D. Buchanan, Rovi