Biography
Born in 1979 in Falkirk, Scotland, Cassells rose quickly among the leading young pipers on the Scottish folk circuit at the dawn of the twenty-first century. He started piping in childhood, regularly claiming top prizes in junior contests before moving on to perform with the Macnaughtons Vale Of Atholl Pipe Band. After finishing school he juggled a marketing-and-tourism degree against a growing calendar of corporate gigs; the latter proved lucrative enough that he launched his own Scottish Bagpiper company in 1999, booking musicians and dancers for weddings and dances. With the new millennium he enrolled in an honours degree in piping at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. The qualification markedly boosted his trajectory, bringing him the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Of The Year award in 2005. During those same years he co-founded the Red Hot Chilli Pipers, a folk-rock outfit of three pipers and two percussionists that earned swift acclaim for its high-octane live shows. Cassells contributed to the group’s first album before completing his own debut. Issued in 2006, Blown Away offered a sleek, forward-looking set that placed his pipes alongside both traditional and contemporary instruments.
Albums