New book honours the dreadlocked Scottish piping prodigy with Celtic Connections link who blazed a trail

He was the piping prodigy who blazed a trail through Scottish culture by bringing the ancient instrument together with dance music.

Martyn Bennett's love of Scottish folk music and clubbing would inspire a string of ground-breaking albums, which are still widely revered decades on from the height of the gifted musician’s fame.

He performed at the premiere of Braveheart in Stirling for Mel Gibson, at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, at the T in the Park festival in Balado, and on stage with Sean Connery and Ewan McGregor at the football World Cup in Paris.

Now, 20 years after he lost a long battle with cancer at the age of just 33, a new book explores the short-lived life and enduring legacy of Bennett, who has inspired a stage show and the creation of a 80-strong orchestra.

Brave New Music, written by piper and broadcaster Gary West, will be launched next week at Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival, which Bennett appeared at as an unknown musician in 1994 before quickly becoming one of its hottest tickets.

West's book traces Bennett's life from his birth in 1971 in Newfoundland, in Canada, where his parents - Skye-born singer, broadcaster and folklorist Margaret Bennett and Cardiff-born geologist Ian Knight - met in the 1960s.

After the couple split up, Bennett's mother returned to Scotland with her son in 1976 and they eventually settled in Kingussie, in the Highlands. There he was taught to play the bagpipes at school by history teacher and piper David Taylor, and started winning competitions from the age of 12.

His first musical mentor said: "I first remember Martyn as a very tiny, excited, desperately enthusiastic wee boy with wide shining eyes. I've never seen anyone master the chanter so fast. It was only a few weeks before he was playing his first competition tunes.”

Bennett and his mother moved to the Scottish capital when she got a job at Edinburgh University's School of Scottish Studies in 1986, successfully auditioning for a place at Broughton High School’s specialist music unit.

Bennett later recalled: "To my surprise, I got in on the bagpipes and the flute. But I didn't play any classical music. I didn't know anything about it. I couldn't write or read music.

"It was much more of an aural thing, an aural tradition to me. So it was quite brave of them to allow me to have my shot at learning formal music.

"I stayed for three years and learned violin, piano and composition, and to read and write music. That was the most amazing three years and the point at which I realised this is where my talent lies."

Bennett continued studying violin and piano at the-then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) in Glasgow, where he met his future wife, Kirsten.

He also started experimenting with sampling equipment and electronic music after going clubbing in the city with RSAMD drama students he had befriended. Busking on Sauchiehall Street with the help of a large battery-powered speaker, he played the pipes on top of the tracks he had created.

Kirsten recalled: "People call it a backing track, but that track was more important to Martyn than anything else that went on. He put everything into that. He created or put down every single sound. He didn't copy and paste things from elsewhere.

"He was an archivist in some ways. He had huge amounts of files of samples, some of them just seconds long, some of them longer. He stored all of that and then would layer many sounds together. The complexity of his work is something that a lot of people don't realise."

Bennett won two major prizes during his time at the RSAMD and also reached the final of the UK-wide BBC Young Tradition Award.

However, the book recalls how he increasingly lacked confidence in whether he had what it would take to become a successful classical musician.

West writes: "He could never see himself spending his life sitting in an orchestra, nor in front of one as a soloist."

Bennett himself said: "I love playing classical music, but it isn't in my blood, it's not in me - which was a big disappointment to my teachers."

West recalls how Bennett was becoming increasingly inspired by ground-breaking dance, electronica and DJ acts like Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim and Moby.

And when he moved back to Edinburgh in 1993, the city's folk, jazz and nightclub scene were bringing musicians and audiences together at venues like La Belle Angele, Legends and Black Bo's.

A key influence was Edinburgh-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer Martin Swan, who had embraced Gaelic song in his world music group Mouth Music, who Martyn recorded with and later supported at his first Celtic Connections appearance.

One review of that show described Bennett’s piping as "ethereal against a thumping techno backdrop" and predicted: "This guy is going to be mega."

It was not just Bennett's music that was making waves, as his dreadlocked hair and habit of stripping to the waist helped raise awareness of the rising star of Scottish music, including from The Proclaimers' manager Kenny MacDonald.

Macdonald recalled: "I started to hear about the dreadlocked piper, but I didn't know much about him. I got to know him and his music, and he needed a little bit of help with deals and promotion and things, so I formed a relationship with him.

"You couldn't fail to be blown away with how good he was. I wasn't a bagpipe fan, I wasn't a folk fan. But as a music fan, I certainly developed a great love for his music. It was just so good."

Between 1995 and 2000, Bennett released three ground-breaking albums and became one of Scottish music's most-high profile musicians. His Millennium night performance at Edinburgh Castle esplanade was broadcast around the world by the BBC and followed by a headline performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival the next summer.

But by the end of 2000, after Bennett and Kirsten had relocated from Edinburgh to Mull, he had called off all future touring plans after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Bennett would undergo extensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, a splenectomy and a bone marrow transplant in the subsequent years, but still managed to create two more critically-acclaimed albums on Mull.

His last work Grit, which many fans believe to be his best album, was released on Peter Gabriel's own record label, and featured the voices of a number of Scottish singers, including Lizzie Higgins, Flora MacNeill, Sheila Stewart, Jeanie Robertson and Michael Marra.

Brave New Music will be launched at Celtic Connections on January 30, ten years after the first concert by the Grit Orchestra, the group of folk, jazz and classical musicians, who returned to the event earlier this month.

Formed by violinist, composer and conductor Greg Lawson to bring Bennett's music to audiences again in large-scale concerts, the orchestra has since performed at the Edinburgh International Festival, the WOMAD Festival and the Barrowland Ballroom and Hydro arena in Glasgow.