Archive
We chat with Emma Hill, Producer of NPC Clubs; Laura-Beth MacCrimmon, Youth & Community Producer; Finlay MacDonald, Director of Piping; and David Shedden, National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland Producer.
Cameron Drummond of Edinburgh will compete to gain a consecutive Captain John A. MacLellan MBE Medal for piobaireachd on August 29th at the 2026 Memorial Dinner & Recital Competition at the Caledonian Hotel in Scotland’s capital city. Organized by the Eagle Pipers’ Society, with sponsorship from the William Grant Foundation, […]
Blair Beaton of Scotia, New York, won the 2026 RSPBA Adult Solo Snare Drumming Intercontinental Championship held at the Irish American Association of Northwest New Jersey, the first in the association’s eight-contest Champion of Champions League. Beaton also earned a spot in the semi-final at the 2026 World Solo Pipe Band Snare Drumming Championship in Glasgow in October.
About sixty fully accredited and potential pipe band ensemble judges from around the globe got together online in a landmark event for the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association on February 7, 2026, when its Adjudicator Panel Management Board held an online Ensemble Judging Workshop in a five-hour structured and free-flowing […]
The shortage of snare drummers and leading-drummers is pretty much a pipe band tradition. But why? Throughout the hundred-year history of competing pipe bands, pipers and drummers have wondered why the perpetual lack exists, but has anyone ever seriously sought answers? pipes|drums is, as we continue our panel discussion
In the first installment, he talked about the making of the album, and in this final part, Liddell picks out his other favourite track of the 15 on the album. Given that his first pick was a blazing hot duo of hornpipes with more gracenotes in his arrangement than there are stars in the universe, his second choice might surprise you.
Under-appreciated fact: deserving candidates of the Balvenie Medal for Services to Piping must be nominated in order to receive the award. For all those who have wondered why someone who’s tirelessly contributed most of their years to piping and pipe bands, looking for no compensation apart from the satisfaction of […]
Eleven elite players are confirmed to compete in the 79th Uist & Barra Solo Piping Competition, scheduled for March 7th at the National Piping Centre’s Otago Street location: Callum Beaumont, Guardbridge, Scotland Calum Brown, Aberdeen Sandy Cameron, Roy Bridge, Scotland Ben Duncan, Edinburgh Jamie Forrester, Haddington, Scotland Finlay Johnston, Glasgow […]
David Clyde, whose contributions to piping in the Ottawa area have gone largely unrecognized, died on January 29, 2026, in his eighty-fifth year.
Stuart Easton of Palmerston North won all four Open solo piping events and the Manawatu Scottish organization’s Grade 4 band took the only contested grade in the pipe band events at the 161st Turakina Highland Games, the longest-running competition in New Zealand and one of the oldest in the world.
We suspected that an exhaustive list of the contents of Bruce Gandy’s pipe box would make for interesting reading. It did not disappoint.
With two firsts in the two events at the inaugural Masters Invitational Solo Drumming Competition, Steven McWhirter of Glasgow was the obvious overall winner.
After the sudden and unexpected shuttering of the contest’s original venue at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, the first Masters Solo Drumming Invitational Competition on Saturday, January 31st, has been moved to the National Piping Centre’s Otago Street premises. Organizer Cam Lawson confirmed that anyone who purchased a […]
For this discussion, we stepped back entirely. No interviewer. Just four pipe band drumming experts talking candidly about why snare drummers can be scarce, why leading-drummers are so hard to recruit, what challenges today’s bands face, and what meaningful steps might reverse the trend.
Miraculously, we were able to connect with Stuart Liddell for a chat about his new album, “Garron,” between a teaching trip to New Zealand, performing at Celtic Connections, looking after Inveraray & District, and preparing to depart for a week of teaching and playing at the Celtic Arts Foundation’s Winter School in Seabrook, Washington.