Emerging Composers is a fantastic professional development opportunity offering paid commissions for emerging composers creating exciting repertoire from new perspectives for Pipe Band. 

Now in our fourth year of the programme, Emerging Composers offers the opportunity  to write for Scotland's only concert Pipe Band. We are calling for emerging composers aged 18-25  (or up to 30 if you identify as disabled) from both inside and out of the Piping community to create new work for the NYPBS.

We particularly welcome applications from people of colour, disabled people, women and the LGBTQ+ community. 

Each composer will receive a bursary of £2,000 and support from NYPBS staff and industry topping mentors.

More information:

The five applicants will collaborate throughout the project, supporting each other as writers alongside mentors and staff. 

Each recipient would be expected to: 

  • attend and participate actively in four Creative Weekends;

  • participate in disability awareness training;

  • undergo a PVG check;

  • deliver a short informal presentation on writing for their instrument / their musical experience to the group;

  • agree on a bespoke training plan covering the full duration with the project lead;

  • keep some sort of reflective diary and provide updates to assist in the promotion of the project and their own work; 

  • work through at least two drafts to completion of a piece for an NYPBS ensemble between 3-5mins; 

  • participate in the workshopping, recording and performance of the new works;

  • lead two large scale rehearsals of their piece with one of the NYPBS National Bands; 

  • participate in an evaluation session at the end of the project.

The project will run from July 2024- April 2025 with activity split between two phases. 

  • Training and support will be structured across four training weekend events, delivered from June-July 2023, where our five successful applicants will work together alongside mentors towards their first drafts.

    Each composer will also be expected to play as part of workshopping each other's pieces.

    Each composer will be expected to attend all four weekends which are scheduled as follows:

    • EC First Creative Weekend 20th-21st July

    • EC 2nd Creative Weekend 10th-11th August

    • EC 3rd Creative Weekend 7th-8th September

    • EC 4th Creative Weekend 28th-29th September

    Each composer must complete a full first draft of their piece by the end of this phase.

  • From October to December 2024, each emerging composer will be given a chance to gain experience in leading large-scale rehearsals of their work, supported by the NYPBS' Director. Each composer is expected to attend two rehearsal days and to complete a final draft of their piece which one of our National Bands will perform at our end-of-year concert on April 2025.

  • Throughout the project we’ll ask each composer to maintain some sort of reflective diary capturing their experience. We’ll meet for a final monitoring session as a group in April 2025.

Here’s what one of our previous participants talking about their experience of the project:

Emerging Composers 2024-25

  • Bronwen Davies

    Raised in Oban, Bronwen Davies is a Welsh/Scottish multi-instrumentalist, teacher and composer based in Glasgow. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Applied Music. Bronwen is a member of the up-and-coming traditional band ‘Rhuvaal’ who released their debut EP in 2020. She has toured all over the country and further a field to Europe playing at music festivals and events. As well as Rhuvaal, Bronwen musical upbringing had a heavy influence from the Argyll music scene and the Argyll Ceilidh trail where she went from being a participant in 2018/19 to being the ceilidh trail co-ordinator in 2023.

    She isnow building her solo and collaborative career through her brand ‘Bronwen Davies music’. Bronwen is also a member of the Islay pipe band where she has been lead tenor drummer for multiple years. She has spent the past 3 years composing bass and tenor scores for the grade 2 band. Bronwen has also spent her years teaching fiddle and tenor drum at Fèis Latharna easter school and Saturday classes and school pipe bands such as Sgoil Lionacleit pipe band. In 2023/24 Bronwen expanded her teaching through being the bass and tenor trainee tutor for the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland.

  • Calum Kerr

    Calum is a recent graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he studied a Bachelor’s in Music specialising in classical trumpet. Originally from Ayrshire, he is now building a diverse career as a UK-based freelance trumpet player and a passionate teacher of brass, dedicated to working with young people. Calum's recent achievements include participating in various recording sessions and successfully auditioning to become a trumpet mentee on the 2023/24 Orchestral Mentorship Scheme at the Royal Opera House in London and also performing as a trumpet soloist on Easter Sunday for BBC Scotland.

    In addition to his performing and teaching career, Calum is thrilled to be part of the emerging composers scheme, where he can explore his interests in composition. In his spare time, Calum enjoys spending time with friends and going to gigs from some of his favourite traditional scottish bands. He comments “As I embark on this project with the amazing team at NYPBS, I look forward to creating something innovative and captivating in collaboration with the young talented musicians!”

  • Rhionna Inwood

    Rhionna Inwood is a skilled Scottish pianist, accompanist, educator, and composer. Recently graduating from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in classical piano and second study vocal, she continues her education at RCS part time to refine her accompaniment skills. Rhionna is establishing a successful freelance career, performing with local choirs, live music concerts, and creating community music programs such as ‘Support the AMS: Ugandan Initiative’ in collaboration with Isabella Gonzalez Diaz.

    With a strong foundation in classical music, Rhionna is passionate about chamber music and accompanying vocalists in various musical styles. She attended the Oxenfoord Summer School in 2023 and will return in 2024 to perform for specialists like Malcolm Martineau and accompany live concerts, including a song cycle concert.

    Rhionna has significant experience in community music settings. As a Benedetti Ambassador, she enjoys workshop assisting and tutoring, while maintaining an active social media presence to support her career. Recent highlights include accompanying choral and solo works for the Kickstart Opera Series Coffee Cadenza Concerts at the Burrell Collection, the RCS International Women's Day Concert 2024, and weekly performances with local choirs in Kilsyth and the Partickhill Community Centre Choir.

    Inspired by film music, classical piano, and Scottish folk music, Rhionna composes and arranges music for school-age groups and piano solos. As an emerging composer with the National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland, she aims to establish herself in the commissioning field and contribute to the traditional music scene.

  • Joe Stollery

    Joe Stollery is a composer originally from central Aberdeenshire. He graduated from the University of Aberdeen with BMus (Hons) (2015), MMus in Composition (2016) and PhD in Composition (2024). He has written for a wide variety of ensembles, mostly instrumental, but also including art songs and a handful of chamber operas. His musical interests and appreciations cover a wide range (including non-classical), and as such his compositional aesthetic stands somewhere between common-practice and the avant-garde. He is also keen on putting dramatic statements into his music and is inclined towards a theatrical element in many of his instrumental works.

    He was twice a finalist in the Carlaw-Ogston Composition Award (2015 & 2016), has participated as an observer at the Cheltenham Festival (2016), and has been commissioned by the Aberdeenshire Youth Orchestra, the Geneva-based wind band Harmonie Nautique, Orchestra of St John’s, Aberdeenshire Saxophone Orchestra, Cappella Nova, Any Enemy and Hebrides Ensemble, amongst others. He was also commissioned by the sound festival and the Silver Cities Stories project for his opera Mither Kirk (2017) and has collaborated with Scottish Opera to produce Nature’s House (2014), as part of a Leverhulme scholarship. He also composed a set of three children’s operas that were performed in primary schools around Aberdeen in February 2019. He recently collaborated with violist Katherine Wren and composer Pete Stollery on Nordic VIola’s A Wing and a Prayer - Deeside and completed a commission for left-hand alone pianist Nicholas McCarthy.

    As well as composing, Joe also plays alto saxophone in the Concert Band and Saxophone Ensemble at Aberdeen University, and is a confident pianist. His personal interests lie in a wide variety of sources, many of which stream into his music. These include the local environment and its history, nature (particularly animals), myths and legends, especially mythical creatures, and the supernatural. He is particularly interested in fantastical concepts and would often speculate on these things in his music, usually by finding and making connections with real-world affairs.

  • Kenneth Macfarlane

    Kenneth is an award winning piper and whistle player from Bearsden, Glasgow. Graduating from The Royal Conservatoire or Scotland’s Traditional Music degree in 2021, he now works as a musician in the Glasgow area, as a teacher and performer. Kenneth originally took lessons at the National Piping Centre aged 6 under a host of elite pipers, most recently from Glenfiddich winner Willie MacCallum & NPC Director Finlay MacDonald, and also spent time in the pipe band scene, winning the World Championship in Grade 2 with The Glasgow Skye Association. He spent 7 years as a member of the NYPBS, leaving as Pipe Major of the Development Band, and returning as a Trainee Tutor in 2022.

    During his time at the RCS, he deepens his love for the wider traditional music genre and spent time studying the low whistle under Ross Ainslie, Marc Duff and Hamish Napier. From this, Kenneth began composing more music, and has seen some of his own compositions recorded and broadcasted on TV & Radio for BBC Scotland.

    Kenneth now plays with ‘Heron Valley’, with whom he regularly tours North America & Europe, ‘Beatha’ who won the Danny Kyle Award at Celtic Connections 2024, and also makes frequent guest appearances with bands such as Càrnan. He also reached the Semi-Finals of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Award in 2022.