Tony Winner Cumming Heads NYC Tartan Day Parade

Scottish born actor Alan Cumming served as Grand Marshall of New York's Tartan Day Parade on April 4th, Cumming lead the parade of bagpipers, Scottish-American organizations, dignitaries, and even Scotties and Westies, up 6th Avenue.

The Tartan Day Parade celebrates Scottish culture and heritage, and the contributions of Scottish-Americans. Cumming remarked, "As an artist so much of what defines you and makes you unique is where you are from and the environment in which you learned your craft.

"For me, being Scottish and training at the RoyAl Scottish Academy of Music and Drama both define me and make me incredibly proud.

"The older I get, and the more I look at Scotland from afar, I realise how much being Scottish defines me as an artist and as a human being, and how I feel more and more connected to it."

The Tartan Day Parade will stepped out at 2:00 p.m. and proceeded north along Sixth Avenue from 46th to 58th Street past Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall, finishing just opposite Carnegie Hall: named for the renownEd Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. The parade forms the centerpiece of New York's Tartan Week, a range of events that takes place worldwide around National Tartan Day annually on April 6.

The Committee was founded by three New York basEd Scottish organizations: Saint Andrew's Society of the State of New York, 1756, New York Caledonian Club, 1856, and American Scottish Foundation, 1956. Two additional organizations, Clan Campbell Society and the New York Police Pipes and Drums were later additions to the Committee.

Alan Cumming trained at the RoyAl Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He made his West End debut in Manfred Karge's Conquest of the South Pole at the Royal Court for which he received a Most Promising Newcomer Olivier award nomination. He gained further Olivier award nominations for La Bete and Cabaret and won for Accidental Death of An Anarchist at the Royal National Theatre, where he also played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and directed Michel Tremblay's Bonjour la, Bonjour at the RNT studio. He played Hamlet on tour and at the Donmar Warehouse to great acclaim, winning the TMA award and a Shakespeare Globe nomination. 

In 1998 he made his sensational Broadway debut in Cabaret and won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics' Circle, Theatre World, NY Press, FANY and New York Public Advocate's awards. He has since appeared on Broadway in Design For Living and The Threepenny Opera. Off-Broadway he appeared in Jean Genet's Elle (which he also adapted) and The Seagull. He returned to the British Stage in 2006 to play Max in Martin Sherman's Bent and for The National Theatre of Scotland he played Dionysus in The Bacchae, which was seen last summer in NYC as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

He made his feature film debut in 1992 opposite Bruno Ganz and Sandrine Bonnaire in Ian Sellar's Prague. US audiences were introduced to him in Circle of Friends, and he went on to appear in many films incuding Emma, Goldeneye, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, X2:X Men United, Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids trilogy, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Julie Taymor's Titus and Ali Selim's Sweet Land (for which he received an Independent Spirit award as producer). With Jennifer Jason Leigh he wrote, produced, directed and starred in The Anniversary Party, which premiered at Cannes and won a National Board of Review award and two Independent Spirit nominations. He also starred and directed in Ghost Writer, and most recently played Sebastian in The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor, opposite Helen Mirren as Prospera.

He has made many TV appearances in the UK and the US, including most recently the mini-series Tin Man, and also acts as host of the Masterpiece Mystery series for PBS. He co-wrote and starred in the now cult BBC2 sitcom The High Life, and won a British Comedy award for the BBC film Bernard and the Genie. For more info visit, www.alancumming.com.

For his work as an activist for civil rights and sex education causes he has received many humanitarian awards from organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, The Trevor Project and the Anti-Violence Project. In 2005 he was named Icon of Scotland and in 2006 received an honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Abertay, Dundee. 

In 2008, Scottish-born Lawrence Tynes, field goal kicker for the Super-Bowl winning New York Giants, served as Grand Marshal. Tynes was joined by Scottish government representatives, including First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, Presiding Officer of Parliament Alex Fergusson, several members of the Scottish Parliament and the former Lord Provost (Mayor) of Edinburgh, Eric Milligan.

Previous Grand Marshals have included: actors Cliff Robertson and Sir Sean Connery; George Reid, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament; Scottish-American writer Randall Wallace, author of the Braveheart screenplay and others.

Caber tossing is a traditional athletic test of strength practiced at Highland Games. It involves first vertically balancing, then tossing, end-over-end, of a telephone pole-like wooden object. A typical caber may be 16 feet in length and weigh approximately 130 pounds. Last year marked the Tartan Day Parade debut of the World's Largest Caber. It will return for 2009.

Inspired by Glasgow's 60 foot tall Christmas tree which stood in the City's Square Christmas, 2007, a group of Scotsmen decided to send a gift of peace, liberty and friendship to the fellow Scots of New York City. And so, the people of the Bullwood Project took the tree and crafted it into the World's Largest Caber.

Carved into the caber are beautiful images of the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and other symbols expressing kinship between the people of Scotland and the U.S. Weighing in at over 600 pounds and measuring 24'10" feet in length, tossing this caber will be a true test of strength. Carrying it in the parade is no easy accomplishment either. Just ask the members of the Tartan Army (fans of the Scottish National Football Team) who carried the stick the entire parade route of its 2008 debut and who will shoulder it again in 2009.

A full schedule of events is available at http://www.tartanweek.com/

Photo Credit: Peter James Zielinski