Brìghde Chaimbeul

Brìghde Chaimbeul is a Scottish smallpipes player and composer from the Isle of Skye, raised in a Gaelic-speaking family. She took up the pipes at seven after hearing Rona Lightfoot play, won the BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2016 and the Horizon Award at the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Across The Reeling (2019), Carry Them With Us (2023) and Sunwise (2025) she has taken the smallpipes beyond the folk circuit: to Big Ears, Le Guess Who? and Supersonic, onto Caroline Polachek's 'Desire, I Want to Turn Into You', and into collaboration with reknowned composer/saxophonist Colin Stetson.

Sunwise

Sunwise is Brìghde Chaimbeul's third album. It follows "the embrace of winter time; the closing in of darkness, the cold, the pull to turn inward", Brìghde says, and the customs of the season: songs and stories told round the fire. The album opens with the waking of the Cailleach Bheur, the hag who brings in the winter; original composition sits alongside the traditional, drawn from School of Scottish Studies field recordings. Colin Stetson accompanies, three uilleann pipers join Sguabag, and her father recites a Hogmanay rhyme on Duan. It topped World Music Charts Europe.