Eve Muirhead hurries hard, throws hammer to open 8th Piping Live! festival

The world’s only bagpipe- and curling-playing Olympian, Eve Muirhead, officially opens the eighth annual Piping Live! International Piping Festival in Glasgow today as the festival’s new ambassador.

Muirhead, the 19-year-old skip for the UK’s Curling Team at the Vancouver Winter Olympics and who also plays with the Pitlochry & Blair Atholl Pipe Band, called on more young people to “pick up the pipes and head to this year’s festival,” an event that, according to organizers, will give the city of Glasgow an estimated economic boost of more than £2.4-million this year.

The 2010 Piping Live! program includes concerts by Capercaillie, the Treacherous Orchestra, Breabach, Finlay MacDonald & Chris Stout, the Battlefield Band and Julie Fowlis during the August 9-15 festival held at venues throughout Glasgow.

“I’ve been playing the bagpipes since I was a child and I think it’s fantastic that we have a festival to celebrate them,” Muirhead said. “I hope any young people that think the instrument is old-fashioned will come out and see for themselves how modern the music is and how young pipers are taking it forward.”

Pipe bands scheduled to perform during Piping Live! include Simon Fraser University, Auckland & District and the Los Angeles Scots, and the usual bevy of contests, recitals and insanity at the University of Strathclyde’s Todd Bar.

Piping Live! runs throughout the week and finishes on Sunday, August 15th with the Masters Invitational Solo Piping Competition at the National Piping Centre, an event that is now a qualifying competition for the Glenfiddich Championships.