Projects & Commissions
RURA
RURA are a multi award-winning act and one of Scotland’s most sought-after folk bands. With three heralded albums, RURA affirm their position as one of Scotland’s leading instrumental groups.
National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland
As the new Director of the NYPBoS, Steven brings his wealth of performance, composition and recording experience to this challenging role. Appointed in July 2020, he is ready to explore the creative potential of a concert piping and drumming ensemble with such a fantastic group of gifted players
Tryst
Comprising ten top contemporary pipers/composers, Tryst first performed at Celtic Connections 2017, showcasing new music inspired by the piobaireachd tradition and exploring the possibilities of a piping ensemble.
Featuring John Mulhearn, Finlay MacDonald, Ross Ainslie, Calum MacCrimmon, Rory Campbell, Ali Hutton, Steven Blake, Lorne MacDougall, James Duncan Mackenzie and Mairearad Green.
“Utterly compelling majesty…at once viscerally primal, and stunningly sophisticated.”
The Scotsman
The Gordon Duncan Experience
Steven is the Musical Director of The Gordon Duncan Experience (GDE), a Celtic big band for young people playing a mixture of Scottish traditional and jazz music, and accepting all instruments from fiddles and pipes to saxophones and French horns.
Love Music Choir
Renowned piper Steven Blake and City of Edinburgh organist John Kitchen joined the Love Music community of 450 singers of all ages.
Steven wrote a piece for the choir, featuring polyphonic Canntaireachd - utilising an ancient monophonic vocable tradition with modern choral textures.
Bystander
As one of Creative Scotland’s ‘20for14’ commissions, Steven travelled around the country to see the impact the Commonwealth Games had throughout Scotland; before, during and after the event. Capturing five images of the Games in Scotland from the perspective of an onlooker, and incorporating research into Debussy’s music, this project experimented with the concept of capturing a particular moment and/or ‘image’.
Distil
Distil allows musicians to work with experienced practitioners from other music worlds: jazz, orchestral, contemporary, in a mutual exchange of ideas and experience. Steven took part in 2012, working with George Duthie to adapt pibroch form and structure by adapting the theme in MacCrimmon’s Lament for piano.
Opera North
Steven was the featured piper in Opera North’s UK premiere production of Silent Night, with cinematic Pulitzer Prize-winning score by American composer Kevin Puts.
“…the lone piper ultimately delivers an incredibly plangent motif as the combatants use the last hours of the truce to bury their dead.”
The Guardian