Carnegie Mellon Pipes & Drums
CMU takes pride in its deep Scottish roots from founder Andrew Carnegie. One of the ways that we celebrate this Scottish heritage is through our bagpipe band, Pipes and Drums, which is made up entirely of current university students and alumni.
CMU is one of the leading pipe bands in the United States and is also one of only a handful of institutions in the world to offer a Bachelor’s degree in bagpipe performance and the only to offer a Master’s degree. Director Andrew Carlisle leads the Carnegie Mellon Pipes and Drums and is also the professor of the bagpipe major in the School of Music
The current band performs at official university events as well as Celtic festivals and Highland games throughout the Eastern United States.
Pipes and Drums won the National Championships in Norfork, Virginia, in 2019, and retained the national championship in 2022 and 2023.
Bagpiping has been an integral part of campus life at CMU since 1939.
History of the Pipes and Drums
In 1985, James H. McIntosh MBE, a world renowned piper, assumed the position as director of the pipe band. During his tenure, it was proposed that Carnegie Mellon institutionalize bagpipes as a legitimate major in its Conservatory of Music. Mr. Elden Gatwood, artist-lecturer of oboe, approached the department head, Marilyn Taft Thomas, with a proposal that bagpipes be formalized as a major and hire Mr. James McIntosh to teach it. Mr. Gatwood, a bagpiping student of Mr. McIntosh, spoke of his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and his international reputation as a bagpipe performer.
"The entire tradition of the campus has been celebratory bagpiping. It makes sense for us to acknowledge bagpipes as a legitimate musical instrument. While there are bagpipe teachers around the world, what Carnegie Mellon offers is a program of study where a person can get a complete grounding in music as well as specific instruction on the instrument" (Thomas, M.T. 1991). The faculty supported the idea with enthusiasm and the proposal was accepted. Prior to this program, no opportunities existed anywhere in the world for the serious student to study bagpiping at a bachelor’s degree level.
The band won the Highland Games at the South Maryland Celtic Festival and at the Colonial Highland Gathering at Fair Hill, MD. In 2012, the band was invited to perform as the Guest Band at the New Hampshire Highland Games held at the Loon Mountain Ski Resort, performing to more than 25,000 spectators. They also played at the world famous Celtic Classic festival in Bethlehem, PA, where crowds of more than 200,000 lined the streets.