Archive

July 22, 2025

Ben Duncan of Edinburgh won two of the three solo piping events on offer for those graded Premier or A by the Competing Pipers Association at the annual Inveraray Highland Games, thus gaining the overall trophy for the second straight year.

pipes|drums is pleased to bring you multi-camera 4K videos from the Grade 2 Medley competition at the 2025 Cambridge Scottish Festival in Cambridge, Ontario. The event had a smaller entry than usual, and only three in Grade 2, but fantastic weather attracted a good-sized crowd to the contest that used […]

July 21, 2025

The Macalester College Pipe Band won Grade 3, the top-contested band event at the 2025 Minnesota Scottish Fair & Highland Games, held on the campus of Macalester College, one of the top-ranked liberal arts colleges in the world. Macalester College President Dr. Sue Rivera presented the band with the President’s Jug

Gordon McCready was the overall winner at the Helensburgh Indoor Piping Competition, where 23 pipers contended for the prizes. Piers Dover of New Zealand was given the Best Overseas Piper award.

July 20, 2025

The Regent House Playing Fields were the venue for the 2025 Ards & North Down Championships, organized by the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association Northern Ireland Branch and supported by Ards and North Down Borough Council.

July 19, 2025

Angus D. MacColl (the dad) and Angus J. MacColl (the son) shared the three first prizes in the senior solo piping at the annual Taynuilt Games near the scenic and historic Pass of Brander in Argyll & Bute. Ultimately, it was Angus J. the Younger who gained the overall trophy.

unny and warm weather was to competitors’ liking at the annual Cambridge Highland Games at Winston Churchill Park, and a good-sized crowd attended. With no Grade 1 entries, Grade 2 was the highest-level band contest of the day, which the Peel Regional Police Pipe Band won against two other entries.

July 18, 2025

Dr. William “Willie” Donaldson is known by name to pipes|drums readers for his articles, reviews and, perhaps most of all, the Set Tunes Series of more than 175 piobaireachds and each of their existing manuscripts he has painstakingly assembled and published exclusively here since 2001. Now he has launched Pìobaireachd […]

July 17, 2025

Eric Rigler’s influence on how normal people think of “the bagpipes” cannot be understated. In Part 4 of the exclusive pipes|drums Interview, he takes us to the moments when Hollywood decided bagpipes are serious instruments that deserve a place alongside world-class orchestras and ensembles, scored by some of the greatest screen composers on earth. Credit […]

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July 15, 2025

Scotland’s National Piping Centre is introducing participant fees to its National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland “Ensembles” program, “a decision we have not taken lightly and one we ultimately believe is in everyone’s best interest,” according to NYPBS Director Steven Blake. “In the short term, this is a substantial change […]

Cameron Bonar won the Gordon Duncan Memorial Kitchen Piping medley competition, and Jack Martin, a member of Grade 2 North Stratton, won the Skye Richendrfer Memorial Jig. Each event paid homage to great contributors to the piping and drumming world. With three firsts and a second, Craig Sutherland came away with the Open Piping aggregate trophy.

July 14, 2025

Not only are there just around 50 tickets remaining for Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia’s “SOLAS” Pre-World’s Concert on August 13th at the 2500-seat Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, but the band is reporting that its hot new merchandise is also in short supply. The pre-sale for SOLAS gear, which includes shirts, […]

In British Columbia’s remote southern interior, Kamloops boasts a population of more than 100,000, and the city expanded with the annual Kamloops Highland Games. A relatively small gathering of pipers, drummers, and pipe bands competed and performed as part of the British Columbia Pipers Association’s summer circuit.

July 13, 2025

Angus MacPhee of Inverness was the overall winner of the senior solo piping at the annual Inverness Highland games at Bught Park in scorching 32°C sunshine.

July 12, 2025

Edinburgh – June 12, 2025 – Dublin’s St. Laurence O’Toole won the 2025 UK Championships in a three-band Grade 1 MSR competition at the Royal Highland Showground in Ingliston, on the west side of Edinburgh, the first time a major RSPBA competition was held in Scotland’s capital city in decades. […]

July 10, 2025

We conclude the “Castle Recordings” with the eighteenth and final installment of piobaireachds in our exclusive series of performances captured on reel-to-reel tape at Edinburgh Castle in the early 1960s by the late Captain John A. MacLellan MBE. “The Gathering of the MacNabs,” “Lament for the Castle at Dunyveg,” “Lament for the Departure of King James,” “Lament for the Little Supper,” “Lament for MacDonald of Kinlochmoidart” No. 1, and “The Young Laird of Dungannon’s Salute.”

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