The New Hampshire School of Scottish Arts is pleased to announce the addition of Liz Simmons to our faculty as a voice instructor!

Liz grew up in a musical family in southern New Hampshire. She studied classical singing as a teenager, but always had a love for the folk and traditional music she was steeped in as a child. She became interested in Irish and Scottish traditional music, studied it on her own, and then with internationally renowned Irish singer Karan Casey, and traditional northern Irish singer Roisin White. She has performed with North Cregg, from County Cork, Ireland, Irish accordionist John Whelan, The Sevens, and is currently in the neo-traditional band Annalivia, featuring Brendan Carey-Block, Emerald Rae, Flynn Cohen and Stuart Kenney. She recently started a new band with Ellery Klein, formerly of Gaelic Storm, Shannon Heaton, and Ariel Friedman.

If you are interested in taking lessons with Liz, give the school a call at 603-621-9949!

Welcome Liz!!

The New Hampshire School of Scottish Arts

At our downtown Manchester location, advertising was easy for us – we just opened our windows! Waves of glorious, Highland music rolled out, filling people’s spirits with the rousing beauty of New Hampshire’s Scottish heritage. Young and old are drawn to the power and the excitement of this living tradition. They walk through our doors and find a welcome place for beginners, intermediates, and masters to explore the stimulating variety of Scottish performing arts – Highland bagpipes, small pipes, fiddle, drum, harp, whistle, and dance. Soon, they find themselves learning from experienced, supportive teachers in a vibrant community of learners. As we shift locations to more satellite schools to cut back our overhead costs we will surely miss our Elm St school. But walk one block up on Hanover Street on Thursdays and you will still hear pipes, drums, fiddles and watch some dancers.

This year, the New Hampshire School of the Scottish Arts marks its tenth anniversary. It is a rewarding time when we can celebrate the accomplishments of this past decade and look forward to fulfilling our goals for the School’s promising future. It is also a time to look back, to remind ourselves of the need the School’s presence now serves in the state of New Hampshire.

Before Lezlie and Pipe Major Gordon Webster opened the doors to the School, there were no solo piping competitors here in New Hampshire and no competitive bands, either. Now, there are at least one hundred solo pipers competing, and there are three pipe and drum bands, too – two at the School and one from the New Hampshire State Police. A similar story can be told for Scottish dance. Ten years ago, there were but a half-dozen Highland dance competitors in the state. Now, there are over sixty. This year, the School is serving more than two hundred students of the Scottish performing arts, with newcomers of all ages enrolling throughout the year.

Thanks to the remarkable efforts of our School community over these past ten years, we have been able to provide our students with:

• superb teachers for all of the Scottish performing arts,
• frequent workshops with renowned instructors in Highland dance, Highland pipes, small pipes and fiddle,
• extensive, indoor festival competitions in the spring and fall, drawing competitors from much of the eastern United States and giving our students a chance to gauge their progress,
• regular exams in Highland dance and piping,
• two pipe and drum bands that compete at grade 4 and 5, perform in concerts, and march in parades,
• concerts and performances by faculty and staff,
• our Bagpipe Lending Library, a tremendous resource of instruments, recordings, books, and music for students, faculty, and visiting instructors, and
• grants, scholarships, and awards from the School and from the New Hampshire Arts Council, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the Bean Foundation, the St. Andrews Societies of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the Scottish Scholarship Foundation, and Clan Munroe.

Thanks to their hard work and dedication to their art,

• six Highland dance instructors have passed teaching exams and four more expect to do so this coming year,
• piping faculty and students have passed a wide array of exams in theory, practical knowledge, and teaching,
• student competitors have succeeded in every class of Highland dance and in every grade of piping,
• some students have excelled to the point of becoming teachers themselves,
• many students are studying more than one Scottish art form, and
• five students have been awarded Apprenticeships from the New Hampshire Arts Council.

We have accomplished all the goals we set for ourselves ten years ago. We see so much bright potential in front of us now. To take the School and its students to the next level, we must

• find a new home for the School – one that can meet our students’ needs for the future,
• hire a person to help manage the School, conduct fund-raising activities, write grant applications, and keep the books,
• equip the School with the technology necessary to produce and archive the hundreds of hours of workshop and competition recordings made available to our students and instructors at the Bagpipe Lending Library,
• repair instruments donated to the Bagpipe Lending Library, so that students and faculty can use the pipes and make the most of the donors’ generosity, and
• offer travel stipends to encourage our student competitors and faculty to travel farther, compete at the highest levels, and broaden their experiences.

At the same time, we will continue doing what we have been doing successfully for the last ten years – provide the New Hampshire community with

• excellence in teaching by our dedicated faculty,
• warm camaraderie from our students and teachers,
• fun and challenge at state and regional competitions,
• master-level training at our specialty workshops,
• focused exams sanctioned by the Piping and Drumming Qualifications Board,
• inspiring performances by our renowned teachers, and
• the preservation of Scottish culture across the generations.