IT'S time for Glasgow to pipe up.

The Piping Live! festival returns this weekend for its 10th year, celebrating a decade of bringing the best in ­piping from across the world to the Dear Green Place.

For Finlay McDonald, one of the festival organisers, it's still a shock just how the event has grown, with more than 150 events on the cards this year.

"When you think back to 10 years ago we didn't know what would happen, and it's surprising and encouraging that it's come so far," he says.

"We've got a great team, the Piping Centre has a brilliant bunch of people and that works.

"Some of the concert venues have changed, some of the themes, but we try to keep at our heart that we're about promoting and enjoying piping and traditional music."

Finlay himself is head of piping studies at the National Piping Centre on McPhater Street, one of the venues for the yearly bash.

As always, attention will be focused on the World Pipe Band Championships at Glasgow Green, which runs alongside the event, but Finlay has plenty of other highlights to take in, too.

"The Masters competition [Monday] is great for competitive piping," he says.

"Julie Fowlis is coming, who did the Brave soundtrack, and the Cape Breton trio are coming over from Nova Scotia in Canada. There's the new Friday Folk night at Oran Mor, too."

There's a personal highlight this Sunday for the 35-year-old, too. He'll be launching a new album, The Cauld Wind, with the fiddler Chris Stout at the National Piping Centre. It's a record that's been some time in the making, before they eventually settled down in Shetland to work on it.

"Chris and I have worked together for over 15 years, on various different projects, and we feel a common enthusiasm for experimenting," says Finlay, who's fresh from spending a few weeks at the Basel Tattoo in Switzerland.

"It's not a standard studio album as we were trying to capture the live sound of two people playing together. That aura is very difficult to capture, and although we tried different places and got lots of good recordings, there was something we couldn't quite find.

"We eventually found it in Shetland, which has a great venue called Mareel that's a concert hall, cinema and café.

"We played there and thought this is the place for us."

Sunday's gig also ties in to a theme of the festival, as entry is free. For Finlay, who lives in Cathcart, having free events and activities that offer a taster of the pipes is vital, as it attracts a new audience to the genre.

"From the get-go, one of our main objectives was to try and get new people involved in piping," he explains.

"This is hopefully a platform for them to access good teaching and see what's available.

"Even within the piping scene, there may be people who are in with one idiom, from folk bands to solo competitions, so we try to bring in lots of different influences from all over the work, so it's about introducing other pipers to different traditions too."

As part of his piping, Finlay travels all over the world, and he feels that's reflected n the Piping Live programme, where acts from Hungary, Italy and Spain, to name a few, will be appearing.

"I've travelled a lot since I was 16 and I get inspiration from travelling to other places and seeing parts of the world you wouldn't see without music," he says.

"The travelling, we use that as inspiration, for guidance for the music. It means there's a diversity there and we're always searching for new collaborations."

n Piping Live! runs from Sunday until August 18. Full line-up and ticket details can be found at www.pipinglive.co.uk.