CMU Pipes and Drums, in Concert

BALMORAL PRESENTS CMU PIPES & DRUMS

Carnegie Mellon University Pipes and Drums - Live in Concert!

Pittsburgh’s Balmoral School of Piping & Drumming is proud to present the Carnegie Mellon University Pipes and Drums for the 2025 Balmoral Classic Concert! Performing live onstage beginning at 7:30pm, Saturday, Nov. 15, at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, 4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Tickets may be purchased online at showclix.com: https://www.showclix.com/event/cmupipes-classic-concert

Come to surround yourself in the full sound of a top notch pipe band, Carnegie Mellon University Pipes and Drums. Take in a powerful and harmonious experience as they play marches, slow airs, dance music (strathspeys, reels, jigs), and ensemble pieces with guest musicians on guitar, bouzouki, bass, keyboard, dancers, and more.

https://youtu.be/ts-jx-VC0Ok

Director Andrew Carlisle leads the Carnegie Mellon University Pipes and Drums, which is made up entirely of current university students and alumni. Carlisle, who is also the professor in charge of the bagpipe major in the University's School of Music, is a professional solo competitive bagpiper with many significant wins of prizes across Europe and North America. He also played for many years as a member of the Field Marshall Montgomery Pipe Band, of Belfast, during which time he won dozens of championship events at the Grade 1 Pipe Band level, including multiple World Pipe Band Championship titles.

As Andrew Carlisle remarked, "The Great Highland Bagpipe is one of the most challenging instruments and also one of the most temperamental. The repertoire is extremely diverse. .. compositions can be more than 500 years old, to contemporary virtuosic pieces."

The band performs frequently at official University events and occasionally for local concerts, the most notable among the latter being their annual Saint Patrick’s Day-proximate “Celtic Connections” tour with the River City Brass. In 2012 the band was invited to perform as the Guest Band at the New Hampshire Highland Games held at the Loon Mountain Ski Resort where the band performed to over 25,000 spectators and also at the world famous “Celtic Classic” festival in Bethlehem, PA where crowds of over 200,000 lined the streets.

The band also travels a limited tour of the United States competition circuit where it consistently wins events at the Grade III level, including wins most recently at the 2024 Celtic Classic (Bethlehem, PA), the 2025 Chicago Highland Games, and the 2025 American Pipe Band Championships in Norfolk; Carnegie Mellon has won the overall award for best Grade 3 band at the American Pipe Band Championships every year since the event returned in 2022. Recently returning from their first foray across the Atlantic into the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association’s competition arena, the band wins took 2nd and 5th place wins, respectively, in the European and World Pipe Band Championships, and the drum corps secured first place for drumming in their competition group at the European Pipe Band Championships.

Bagpiping has been an integral part of the campus life at Carnegie Mellon University since 1939. The Kiltie Band was started by Lewis W. Davidson and each year students who were interested in learning to play the bagpipes could enroll. "The entire tradition of the campus has been celebratory bagpiping… What Carnegie Mellon offers is a program of study where a person can get a complete grounding in music as well as specific instruction on the instrument" (Thomas, M.T. 1991). In 1991, under the direction of James H. McIntosh MBE, a world renowned piper, a bagpiping program was officially established as part of the School of Music. Come hear their music celebration!