Fred Morrison

This article is about the musician. For the American football player see Fred "Curly" Morrison.

Fred Morrison is a renowned Scottish musician and composer. He is widely thought to be in the top handful of pipers in the world.

Fred Morrison is known for his original, powerfully exuberant, virtuosic and highly improvisational style which combines the Gaelic piping tradition of South Uist with contemporary and eclectic influences. One of the few pipers to have achieved success in both the competitive piping and folk music scenes, Fred is a virtuoso of the Highland pipes, the bellows-blown Reelpipes, the Irish Uilleann pipes and low whistle.

Fred Morrison was born in 1963 near Bishopton, Renfrewshire, where he grew up, regularly visiting his paternal family home in Gernish, South Uist. Taught piping by his late father - also Fred, also a notable piper - from the age of nine, Fred Junior became immersed in the rounded-out, driving piping style of the Outer Hebrides. His father taught him through the traditional method of cantaireachd, the sung vocables used to convey pipe music before notation came on the scene, and Fred attributes much of his approach to that. "I hear that singing in my head every time I play," he told one interviewer.

His prowess on the great Highland pipes had already gained him honours in the Scottish competition piping circuit (the most exacting in the world), including the coveted gold medals at Oban and Inverness, while he has taken the prestigious Macallan trophy at Brittany's Lorient Festival seven times.

At a time when Scottish piping was broadening out into the burgeoning traditional music scene, Fred was experimenting, taking on board eclectic influences from elsewhere and developing a formidable technique that can put a unique spin on some of the most well-worn items in the repertoire. He was soon in demand as a solo performing artist, before joining the short-lived "supergroup" Clan Alba (with Dick Gaughan, among others) before joining Capercaillie for three years, during which time he played in and helped arrange the Highland group's music for the film Rob Roy.

As his reputation spread, he took to the bellows-blown Scottish Lowland or Reelpipes, which have been experiencing a revival in recent years - their reeding conducive to the kind of cross-fingering and vibrato which Fred employs in his playing. He has also become known as a virtuoso on the Irish Uilleann pipes and low whistle.

Fred was voted Instrumentalist of the Year in the Scots Trad Music Awards for 2004.

His stature as a composer was recognised by Glasgow's mammoth Celtic Connections festival in January 2005, when he was commissioned to write the customary grand opening composition. He called it Paracas, an ambitious musical journey through Gaelic culture and history which involved not only several pipers but other folk musicians and singers, as well as an orchestra and chorus.

Fred has always been keen, having worked mainly as a solo artist or as a session musician with other well-known groups, to put together a live band to bring to life on a larger scale his own unique compositions and arrangements.

This ambition has now been realized in the form of the four accomplished, cutting edge musicians who form the Fred Morrison Band.

External links

• Myspace site
• Solo live performance on YouTube
• Two tracks from the new Fred Morrison Band