Ed has been playing the bagpipes for over 15 years. He began learning when he was 11 years old after being intrigued by a piper whilst on holiday in Aberfeldy, Scotland. He was taught in his home town of Chesterfield by a piper named Alec Maclain who kindly dedicated much of his time and patience to helping Ed learn the instrument. As Ed became more confident at playing the bagpipes Alec introduced him to The Seaforth Highlanders, based in Mansfield who he performed with for almost two years playing at weddings, carnivals and remembrance day parades. As Ed's piping improved he craved new challenges so Alec introduced him to the Ashbourne Pipes and Drums band whom he competed and performed with for several years in grades 3 and 4.

Whilst in the Ashbourne band Alec had briefly taken over the Nottinghamshire Police Pipe Band as pipe major and had invited Ed to play in Germany with the band at a beer festival in the Black Forest. This involved 2 days of heavy drinking and performing in front of very large audiences!

As well as playing and performing in pipe bands, Ed has busked in many cities across the UK and even in Europe (Bruges and Brussels). He has also helped raise money for charities such as Children In Need (in his school years) which earned him a front page feature in the Derbyshire Times newspaper. Ed has also helped raise money for the NSPCC for a man who had just completed a sponsored walk of over 200 miles to raise money for the charity. This involved Ed greeting him at the end of his walk outside Hardwick Hall (Derbyshire) and then piping him into Bolsover and performing in the community WMC.

Ed has also played the bagpipes for a scene in the play Brigadoon performed by a community church group based near Ripley, Derbyshire. This involved learning a specific tune and playing the pipes with a backing band during the relevant scene in the play. Ed performed in this play every night over 5 days.

Ed has also been interviewed on Radio Sheffield which included performing a couple of tunes for their morning show including a tune that he had composed himself.

Ed currently performs as a solo piper. He had to leave Ashbourne band because he moved to Sheffield to study and it was too far to travel. He is however looking to join a competing band in the very near future and is preparing to compete in the solo piping championships in 2008.

Recent public events Ed has played at include Sheffield Scimitar's Neil Abel's testimonial ice hockey match, the Sheffield Highland Fling which landed Ed photos in the Sheffield Star and on the front page of the Sheffield Gazette and most recently the IIFA 2007 (Bollywood Awards) which involved a short performance on stage in front of 12'500 people.Click here to watch.

Ed is currently available to hire for public and private functions including weddings, funerals, birthday parties, and corporate events, etc. He considers himself an experienced and professional bagpipe player who practices for at least an hour every day and often plays the Small Pipes (the bellow blown version of the bagpipes) at local folk nights around Sheffield. Ed plays a mixture of traditional and modern Scottish and Irish music and is always happy to learn specific tunes for bookings provided he is given enough notice.