American piper new head of Scottish Traditional Music at RSAMD

Joshua Dickson PhD has been appointed Head of Scottish Traditional Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Originally from Alaska, Dickson moved to Scotland in 1992 to study Scottish Gaelic at the University of Aberdeen.

 

Dickson has worked with the RSAMD since 2006, working to create the organization’s Traditional Music Grade Exams, the first of its kind in Scotland.

 

“I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked with many of the Scottish Music Department’s talented staff and students over the past few years and I am thrilled to be able to work more closely with the department,” Dickson said in a release. “New artistic director Phil Cunningham and to do all I can to ensure that the Scottish Music students’ experience here continues to be rigorous and rewarding.”

 

Cunningham is Creative Director of the RSAMD’s Scottish traditional music degree program.

 

Dickson’s doctorate is in the history of the piping tradition of the southern Outer Hebrides at the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, and was published in book form in 2006 by John Donald Press as When Piping Was Strong: Tradition, Change and the Bagpipe in South Uist.