{"id":4293,"date":"2026-06-08T13:52:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/?page_id=4293"},"modified":"2026-06-08T13:52:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T12:52:56","slug":"anna-murray","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/anna-murray\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Murray"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Anna<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Born in Glasgow and raised in the community of Back on the Isle of Lewis, Anna Murray grew up with Gaelic as the heartbeat of her world \u2014 the language, the music, the ceilidhs, the local choirs and theatre group. It was, as she puts it, simply the world she lived in, and that deep rootedness in Gaelic culture has shaped everything she has done since. The sea was on her doorstep, the language was in the air, and music was woven into the fabric of daily life in ways that felt entirely natural. She counts herself incredibly lucky for that upbringing, and everything she has gone on to achieve flows directly from those early years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna began learning the chanter in Primary 6 \u2014 initially, she admits, to get out of history lessons \u2014 but quickly discovered a genuine and lasting love for the pipes. Her first teacher was Angus Macleod (Boxer Doyle), brother of the celebrated Donald Macleod, and when Angus retired she was taken on by PM Iain Murdo Morrison, an inspirational teacher and musician whose influence shaped not only how she plays but who she is as a musician. Alongside the pipes, she began singing in competitions at the local M\u00f2d, supported by a school that took real pride in Gaelic events and in ensuring its pupils valued their language and music. Her influences at that stage included her teachers, the great pipers Norman and Alasdair Gillies from Ullapool, and singers Mary Smith and Ishbel MacAskill \u2014 alongside, she cheerfully notes, a healthy dose of Deep Purple for contrast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna always harboured a quiet hope that she might one day follow in Iain Murdo Morrison’s footsteps and teach piping in the Lewis schools as he had done. When that opportunity came her way, she embraced it wholeheartedly, teaching piping in the island’s schools from 2011 to 2023 \u2014 a role she regards as one of the greatest privileges of her life. The impact of those years is visible across Lewis today, in the number of young pipers who came through her classes and went on to perform with confidence and pride. During her time in the schools, she witnessed something quietly significant: for the first time, more girls were learning the pipes than boys. Small things, she reflects, tell you something is changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That matters, because Anna was herself a pioneer. When she began recording in the early 1990s there were very few female pipers on the scene at all, and her presence \u2014 and her willingness to push at the edges of the tradition \u2014 helped open doors for those who followed. She has always loved exploring where tradition can lead, finding that mixing pipes with blues and jazz never felt like a contradiction but rather a conversation. The late Martyn Bennett was a huge inspiration in that regard, an electrifying performer genuinely unlike anyone else. A reviewer at a concert they shared once christened Anna “the hooligan of piping.” She chose to take it as a compliment. That same spirit of pushing at the edges while staying true to the roots is something she finds thrilling in the work of today’s musicians, pointing to the extraordinary arrangements from the likes of Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton as examples of a tradition that remains gloriously alive and restless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaelic song has been a constant thread running alongside her piping throughout her life. From a young age she was performing at weddings and ceilidhs right across Lewis, many of them fundraisers for what would become F\u00e8is Eilean an Fhraoich, sharing platforms with pipers Audrey Mackenzie and Alice Maclean, the Lynne Maclean Dancers, Duncan Gordon on the box, and some of the finest Gaelic singers of her generation. Those evenings \u2014 and the occasional ‘dannsa an rathaid’ on forays to Harris \u2014 were formative experiences that deepened her connection to community music-making and to the particular joy of performing alongside people who share a culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That joy has continued through her long involvement with Hebridean Women, the annual concert produced by An Lanntair Arts Centre in Stornoway as part of the HebCelt Festival. Singing year after year alongside extraordinary voices from across the islands has been, she says, a genuine privilege \u2014 and the craic with the likes of CathyAnn MacPhee and Kathleen MacInnes is such that it sometimes makes it genuinely hard to carry on singing for laughing. Gaelic music has also taken her to perform and teach in many other countries, sharing a culture with audiences who might never otherwise have encountered it, and bringing the tradition far beyond the shores of the Outer Hebrides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her contribution to community music-making extends beyond performance and classroom teaching. Through her work with the local council, Anna founded the Lewis and Harris Youth Pipe Band \u2014 bringing young pipers together, giving them a collective identity, and watching them grow in confidence and take real pride in performing across their community. It is exactly the kind of work that happens quietly, consistently, and without fanfare, and it is exactly the kind of work that keeps a tradition alive from one generation to the next. She has worked across an impressively broad range of the Gaelic arts \u2014 theatre, television, music, and education \u2014 accumulating a richness of experience she could never have imagined when she first picked up that chanter to escape history class. What strikes her most when she looks back, she says, is not what she has done but the extraordinary people who made it possible: wonderful teachers, fellow performers, and the tireless volunteers across the Gaelic arts sector who give so much of themselves, quietly and consistently, to keep it all alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaelic is Anna’s first language, and she sees no separation between the culture and the music \u2014 they are one and the same. She is a passionate advocate for the F\u00e8is movement, which she has watched grow from something small and community-rooted into a national force reaching thousands of young people every year. She is a proud supporter of An Comunn G\u00e0idhealach, which has been at the heart of promoting Gaelic language and culture for well over a century. And she currently works with Qualifications Scotland as Co-ordinator for Gaelic Medium exams \u2014 because, as she is clear, the future of the language depends not only on songs and stories but on ensuring young people can build real careers through Gaelic. Nurturing the next generation, she says, feels every bit as important as performing, if not more so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for a new album \u2014 she thinks it might finally be time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She closes with a beloved Gaelic saying that seems to sum up everything she stands for: ‘Thig cr\u00ecoch air an t-saoghal ach mairidh gaol is ce\u00f2l’ \u2014 the world will come to an end, but love and music will endure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Murray’s induction into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame recognises a lifetime of performance, teaching, and advocacy in service of Gaelic language, culture, and music, and an extraordinary contribution to nurturing the next generation of players and singers on the Isle of Lewis and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Born in Glasgow and raised in the community of Back on the Isle of Lewis, Anna Murray grew up with Gaelic as the heartbeat of her world \u2014 the language, the music, the ceilidhs, the local choirs and theatre group. It was, as she puts it, simply the world she lived in, and that deep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4304,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4293","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4311,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4293\/revisions\/4311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.handsupfortrad.scot\/hall-of-fame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}