Fresh from Dior’s star-studded event at Drummond Castle in Perthshire which attracted attention from all over the world, MacDonald took time out to tell the Sunday National how grateful he is that this year’s Piping Live! festival will go ahead in August. “To be quite honest we are delighted the festival can happen in any form because we are seeing festivals left, right and centre that are having to stop for a year or cancel indefinitely,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking to see so many festivals not continue but we have been lucky in terms of funders and the public still buying tickets.
” READ MORE: Glasgow set to host biggest week-long bagpipe festival this summer Around 30,000 people are expected at this year’s festival in Glasgow which is now in its 21st year and will feature around 700 musicians across its nine-day run at free as well as ticketed events. As director of piping at Scotland’s National Piping Centre, it’s to be expected that a piping festival would be part of MacDonald’s remit – but Dior? Even MacDonald was slightly taken aback to be asked to enter the world of high fashion, despite being dubbed “Piper to the Stars” after playing with the likes of Bryan Adams and Primal Scream. “I was quite surprised but I do quite a lot of different collaborations and I end up playing at gigs I never thought I would,” he said.
Yet while he is open to all kinds of events, his priority is to make sure the pipers are not being used as a gimmick, or i.