LIVE SET ON BBC RADIO SCOTLAND a few years back. We are a multi-genre song jam session, currently resident on 2nd Monday of the month at Bar Bloc, Bath St, Glasgow. The core group is: Jenn Butterworth – voice and guitar, Hamish Napier- voice and wurlitzer electric piano, Laura Beth Salter - voice and mandolin, Steve Forman – percussion, Adam Sutherland – fiddle, Innes Watson – fiddle and percussion. We’ve been so lucky to have some of Scotland’s finest musicians come down and play. It’s been a great mix of musical backgrounds and styles, and some of the best music I’ve ever been part of.

Dancing Queen

Scottish whistle legend Marc Duff [founding member of Capercaillie] and I have formed a duo: twa whistles and twa accompaniment instruments! Check us out here:

www.hamishnapier.com/projects/marc-…sh-napier-duo/

Recorded for a promo video/demo made by ANDREA GOBBI @ Carrier Waves, Glasgow.

Memories of Fiona Anderson [H Napier]/ Donald & Fran MacKenzie of Invershneckie [H Napier]

TWA PENNY WHISTLES! Green Grow the Rushes/Gladstone's/Spey in Spate [last 2 by J.S.Skinner]

Here is a playlist of demos/samples all of my compositions to date. Cheers, Hamish

Ka-Ching! (jig)

Grant Wood Reversed Into My Dads Fence (7:8)

Innes Watson's Lament For The Death Of His Second Lung (arranged For String Quintet)

Memories Of Fiona Anderson (slow Reel)

Robertson's (fast Waltz, Back Of The Moon Version)

Unfortune-Ventura (polka)

Greg In The Garioch (Waltz)

Minerva Street Waltz, The (fast Waltz, With Shona Mooney)

Wee Plank, The (hornpipe)

Eric's March (9:8 March)

Ropeman Hornblower (bluegrass Reel)

Moray Drive (7:8)

Mairearad Green's (jig)

Lament For John McGann

Donald Mac The Garage (reel)

Hardy Vardy's (Irish 2:4 March)

A very popular hill in Strathspey said to watch over the Cairngorm Mountians it faces. This tune is a thank you gift from Cherry to her dear friend Irene for being such a huge support and watching over her during her recovery from hospital in 2020.

Meall A Bhuachaille [The Shepherd's Hill] - Hamish Napier Feat. Duncan Chisholm And Su - A Lee

A new traditional pipe and fiddle tune for Moray, commisioned by the Remembering Together project - Scotland’s Covid Community Memorial Programme, which worked with local partners to commission artists in all 32 local authority areas to co-create collective acts of reflection, remembrance, hope and healing with communities across Scotland following the 2020-2022 pandemics. 'The Beauty of Moray' is a type of apple, first recorded in 1883, a favourite in the North of Scotland noted for it's beauty. Long ago, Moray was famous for it's bountiful orchards and apple groves. The inspiration for the title icomes from Scottish folklore in which the apple tree is known as the Tree of Love.

© Hamish Napier and Duncan Chisholm MCPS/PRS 2023. 
Commissioned by the 'Remembering Together' project.
www.hamishnapier.com www.duncanchisholm.com

The Beauty of Moray [by Duncan Chisholm & Hamish Napier]

Abi Dunsmore commissioned this for her sister Rachael's birthday yesterday.

Rachael's Song (4/4 March)

'Windsong' the Vass family yacht - a bonnie wee 34 footer that sails out of Nairn. This was written in the galley kitchen while on Loch Lochy! I first sailed in 'Windsong' from Oban to Inverness through the Caledonian Canal as part of Mike Vass' 'In the Wake of Neil Gunn' trip with a whole load of other lovely folk musicians. but the weather never allowed us to get the sails up once (wind against us all the way). BUT, a year later we sailed from Nairn to Bergen, Norway via Wick, Orkney, Fair Isle and Shetland. WHAT a trip we had!

This is a joyful wee tune, and I hope it makes you feel as happy playing it as I was creating it.

This is a recording of Mike and I jamming on the tune (in F major) down inside the cozy galley just a few minutes after it was written. Sorry about the big noisy drone coming from my laptop folks!

Hamish Napier's Album

windsong

A recording of the tune sung into my iphone using my embarrassingly bad non-pipers canntaireachd vocals, just after I finished writing tune in the car somewhere on the A9 north of Kingussie en route to Ullapool on Friday!  Don't worry I was using the hands free!!! And yes, that's a drone coming from the CD player! 

Commissioned by the Fraser Shaw Trust for 'ShawFest 2016' in Glasgow.  The title is a line from the classic Scots song 'Happy We Are A' Thegither', the words and sentiment of which very much remind me of Fraser Shaw: a great friend, composer, piper, fellow-whistler and much loved character, who passed away in May 2015 after battling with MS and latterly PML. Fraser was always a great man for instigating gatherings of friends out at the pub for craic, drams & music!

Frien'ship Brings Us Here the Night

A jig from the penultimate track on my solo album 'The River' - which has been put forward for 'Album of the Year' at the Scots Trad Music Awards 2016.  You can view all 20 nominees and vote here: https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/scotstradmusicawards/scots-trad-album-of-the-year-2016/

I vividly recall the first time my mother sat me down to tell me someone that I knew had died.  It was an old fly fisherman known locally as Old Man Dunshee. A WWII Merchant Navy veteran with an epic life story, we would always see the legend whizzing down from the town on his red and white Vespa scooter to the Old Spey Bridge, clad in full fishing gear and waders, with his fishing rod sticking out the back. They found him one day floating down the Spey, after a heart attack, doing what he loved best, fishing for trout.  After the funeral, as the local minister took a boat into a deep pool on the river to scatter the ashes, as was Mr. Dunshee's request, dozens of trout suddenly appeared to dine on Dunshee's remains.  There's a quiet retribution in that which I'm sure the Old Man would have approved of!

Old Man Dunshee (Jig)

Luminosity

Joey Beauty's

Here's another one of my compositions because it's TuNesday!...a video of my multi-talented neighbour Steven Byrnes and I playing it in my kitchen has been doing the rounds on Facebook since we posted it back in July. It is to be recorded on my forthcoming album this year, which will be the soundtrack to the new 'Grantown East - Culture & Heritage Centre' (an new tourist attraction in Grantown on Spey to be opened in 2018...some info here http://www.unseensteam.co.uk/news/create-news-515). The album will feature Andrea Gobbi, Ewan MacKenzie Robertson and Fraser Stone, and possibly some other musicians local to Strathspey!

WHAT IS IT? It's 6/8 pipe march, that can be played as a slow air (with pibroch sounding passages here and there).

WHAT'S IT ABOUT? - I say 'lament' but what I really mean is 'in praise of'. I wanted to honour all the highly skilled workers of days gone by that did many things by hand without the computers and complex modern machinery that we have nowadays: from traditional kitlmakers, to steam locomotive drivers, to whisky distillers and traditional styles of farming. Fair play to them all - they had such a strong bond to their work, and their skills and knowledge were fine-tuned over generations.

Lament for the Old Ways

A unique musical meditation on a much-loved landscape, Duncan Chisholm's 'Sandwood' album is named in honour a favourite Sutherland beach. It was a pleasure to co-write five tracks with Duncan Chisholm for this stunning new album. I experienced Sandwood Bay myself for the first time last year. A very special place. It's a lost region of Venus, a fragment of a parallel universe and a millennia locked in the corner of the sea.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL TRACK OR ALBUM HERE:
https://www.duncanchisholm.com/product/sandwood-mp3

'Bagh Seannabhad' [H Napier] - excerpt from Duncan Chisholm's SANDWOOD

Here is a load of my own compositions. For more compositions, each demoed as mp3s with free sheet music downloadable as PDFs, please go to: 

http://www.hamishnapier.com/composer/

Father Frank Conway of Tarbet        [H Napier]

“The Witch of Nuide"

A story for the 'Badenoch Great Place Project' by Badenoch Heritage.

This is old local tale from Kingussie collected in the late 19th century. It tells about a local farming community that lives in fear of an infamous witch. The story is about a lowlander who has just moved to the area who doesn’t believe in witchcraft. But expect mischievous deeds, supernatural shapeshifting, story weather and even the Devil himself all caught up in the powerful current of a mighty river about to burst its banks at any minute!

Hamish Napier

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