In 2009 Neil was commissioned by the National Piping Centre and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama to write a large scale orchestral work based around the piping compositions of his father, Duncan Johnstone.  The resulting work, scored for bagpipes, small pipes, whistle, flute & string orchestra, was entitled Suite for Alan.

Neil used Duncan's piobaireachd Lament for Alan, my son as the starting point for the work with a full performance played by Roddy MacLeod, who was a pupil of Duncan's. The suite, which incorporates a motif using the first four notes of the piobaireachd throughout, is made up of some of Duncan's finest marches, hornpipes, slow airs & jigs .

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Of the work, Neil says "Suite for Alan is my own personal tribute to my father and Alan (who died from Leukaemia at the age of 20) , and the overall feeling I wanted to get across when composing the suite was to celebrate my fathers’ life through his music whilst trying to balance this with the sadness of losing a brother. It was for these two reasons, I decided to fuse together the piobaireachd with other compositions both written by my father and tunes closely associated with him, resulting in a homage to both of them." 

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The work was premiered at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow on 20th March 2010 following on from the annual Duncan Johnstone Memorial Competition.  It recieved a repeat performance later that year at Piping Live!  The soloists on that occasion were Roddy MacLeod,  Allan MacDonald, Iain MacDonald, Mike Katz & Finlay MacDonald alongside an ensemble comprising some of Scotland's finest string players conducted by Neil.

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