ScottishPower plans to energize audience with ambitious 2011 Glasgow Concert

When your sponsor is in the business of making and selling power, it makes sense to tie the theme into the biggest annual concert of the pipe band year, and that’s exactly what the Grade 1 ScottishPower Pipe Band of Glasgow plans to do when it takes the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall stage on Wednesday, August 10th.

“Energy” is the name the band has chosen for the concert, following a trend over the last few years to apply a one-word title to the annual “pre-World’s” show.

Although he emphasized that things are of course still in the planning stages, ScottishPower’s Pipe-Major Chris Armstrong foreshadows an event that could be the most ambitious concert yet mounted by a pipe band.

“What I can tell you for sure is that we have a big production planned,” Armstrong said. “This will include upwards of 80 musicians on the stage, including the band but also a string and potentially a brass section.”

Armstrong said that the show will feature a rendition of “MacKay’s Memoires,” a piece by Martyn Bennett based on the ground and first variation of “Lament for Mary MacLeod.”  “This is where the idea for including a big string and brass section came from, which we are going to use in a number of the other sets,” he added.

Those hoping for mostly traditional pipes-and-drums-only pieces may be in for some disappointment, though, as Armstrong confirmed that customary pipe band sets he has “purposely kept to a minimum.”

The annual concert, which has been promoted and coordinated by the Grade 2 Phoenix Honda Glasgow Skye Pipe Band since its beginnings in the early 1990s, is often seen as something of a good luck event, or a springboard to a higher level of competition success. Last year’s concert artists, St. Laurence O’Toole, went on to win the 2010 World Pipe Band Championship two days later.

Tickets for the concert are scheduled to go on sale during the week of December 20th via the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s online and offline box offices, and are priced at £19.50 and £17.50 each.

Other bands employing one-word titles for their Glasgow concert are Simon Fraser University’s “Affirmation,” St. Laurence O’Toole’s “Evolution,” and Field Marshal Montgomery’s “RE:CHARGED.”