Matt MacIsaac

The New York Times called him a traditional virtuoso. His playing is known for speed, clean execution and flow, with lift and timing that hold up at fast tempos, but the technique is always there for the music. He likes to add rhythmic drive to a tune without losing its lilt, and to find fresh, playful variations in tunes everyone knows.

That sound comes from growing up in Cape Breton music and twenty years on the road. He spent fifteen of them touring with Natalie MacMaster on pipes, whistles and banjo, and he plays with the Juno-nominated band Beòlach. Playing for dancers gives his piping a groove-oriented edge you don't often hear from pipers who play only for judges. He calls himself a modern traditionalist.

On the competition boards, he has won the Silver Medal at Oban at 18, the Canadian and US Gold Medals and the Gordon Duncan Memorial Competition, among many others, and he has played with the all-star Spirit of Scotland pipe band. In 2022 he became the first non-Scottish piper to win the Alasdair Gillies Memorial Recital Challenge in Glasgow, an award for creative, technical and musical acumen.

He also teaches, online and at workshops on both sides of the Atlantic. Tone and tuning are at the heart of his teaching, and what he does best is diagnosis: he hears exactly where a problem starts, whether in the fingers, the instrument or the shape of the music, and teaches players to hear it for themselves. His compositions are collected in The MacIsaac Collection of Pipe Music, Vol. I.