The Right Path is the 16th annual CD of the students of the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music. These CDs are well-established as an acoustic yearbook, demonstrating the wide variety of material from all areas of the vibrant Scottish musical tradition which the students select, arrange and perform over a full school year. In order to squeeze a big enough sample onto the albums, we use a two disc format with the Pre-Christmas disc showing the more formative stages of the year’s work, and the Post-Christmas disc showcasing the final flourishes.

The production of the Centre’s annual CD is the focal point of the whole school year, and the material on it is selected from all the live performance arrangements produced that year. The Centre, also known as Sgoil Chiùil na Gàidhealtachd, is a residential project based at Plockton High School in the Highlands of Scotland. Its previous students include several award-winning performers and leading lights of the current generation of Scottish traditional musicians and singers, and the tutors include many of the best known traditional musicians in Scotland.

Entry to the Centre is by audition and is open to all secondary school pupils resident in Scotland. Students of the Centre learn playing and singing, both live and in the studio, composing and arranging, the history and context of traditional music, stagecraft, music technology, and all the other diverse skills which go to make up a modern professional musician.

Leavers are well equipped for further study in music, or indeed a career in music if that’s what they want, but it’s important to know that the Centre doesn’t consider itself merely to be a hothouse for professional musicians. Many of the leavers have followed other career paths, but what’s important is that they take their music with them wherever they go in life, which is how any tradition survives and thrives.

For further information, call 01599 544706 or e-mail dougie.pincock@highland.gov.uk

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