JUNE 2009
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Page 15
Top award for soldiers' album
DONALD - GORDON'S
GLASGOW - An album of songs laced with themes of remembrance for fallen soldiers has taken top honours at Britain's leading classical music awards.
Spirit of the Glen: Journey, with 15 tracks of pipe and drum tunes performed by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, was named album of the year at the Classical Brit awards at the Royal Albert Hall, on May 13. The award is decided by public vote.
The work, recorded by Scots military pipers at a base in Basra, Iraq, beat albums by acts including Andrea Bocelli, Katherine Jenkins, Jonathan Ansell and Mike Oldfield. In doing so, the guards became the first non-professional musicians to win a Brit award.
The pipers' president, Major Angus Benson-Blair, called the award a "mind-blowing achievement" against competition that included the best-selling album from three Irish Catholic clergymen, The Priests.
"It will be a huge, huge morale boost for everyone in the regiment and across the armed forces as a whole," he said.
The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards pipe band is made up of about 24 serving soldiers ranging from trooper to staff sergeant. "Every single person in the band is first and foremost a tank soldier, and plays the pipes in their spare time," said Major Benson-Blair.
The guards are currently based in
northern Germany, but many of the players have served three or four tours in Iraq, and expect to be posted to Afghanistan. Their playing schedule includes the Edinburgh and Windsor Tattoos as well as foreign tours.
The guards' first album, Spirit of the Glen, hit the top of the charts in 8007 and went platinum, outselling albums from Bon Jovi and Elton John.
The album was released to mark Remembrance Day last November, on the 90th anniversary of the armistice ending the First World War.
"There was an armistice theme to it, a remembrance theme to it, it hit the mood of the public when it came out," Major Benson-Blair said.
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