Archive
Vancouver – March 28, 2026 – With two firsts, Alex Pavlovic from Houston, Texas, made history by becoming the first overall winner of the Jack Lee Amateur Invitational Solo Piping Competition, where a large audience filled the Anderson Room in the Seaforth Armoury of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. There […]
Jake Jörgensen of ScottishPower won the 2026 Scottish Solo Snare Drumming Championship after a points tie with Peoples Ford Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia’s Kerr McQuillan.
The Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association has officially accepted Melbourne, Australia’s Hawthorn Grade 1 entry to the World Pipe Band Championships. The band was advised by the RSPBA that its Grade 1 status in Australia would be honoured, thus also confirming pipes|drums’ estimate of 13 in the top grade at […]
Over the years, pipes|drums has amassed a lot of merchandise sent to us by record companies, artists, associations, competitions, filmmakers, and all manner of folks who have made commercial recordings. They take up a lot of space, which we’re trying to economize. We’ve digitized everything we want, so we thought […]
When Grade 2 Glasgow Skye Association revealed that it was going on the proverbial and all-too-familiar “hiatus” in 2026, it was only the latest unwelcome news of another top-grade band struggling to survive. Pipe-Major Donald Stewart resigned, and Leading-Drummer Les Galbraith followed, prompting the band’s management to make the difficult decision to use the year […]
If you’re a piper not yet 21 and ready to shred on the world’s biggest stage, the time is now to audition for Pipe Idol 2026, the popular annual event at Glasgow’s Piping Live! festival. Since 2004, numerous Pipe Idol winners have gone on to piping glory, including Highland Society […]
Despite decades of stringent vetting, testing and management by associations, there has been a noticeable increase in piping, drumming, and pipe band competitions that employ unaccredited people to adjudicate their events, and competitors don’t seem to mind. And that’s disconcerting.
James “Jimmy” McColl, the Highland Society of London Gold Medallist and piobaireachd thought-leader and reformer, died at his home in California on March 19, 2026, at the age of 97. He was predeceased by his wife, Betty, only 21 days earlier. Born in the mining village of Shotts, Scotland, in […]
St. Mary’s Church in Broughty Ferry, Scotland, will be the venue for an exclusive recital on April 17, 2026, by Double Gold Medallist Douglas Murray, the latest in the series of performances put on by the Mackenzie Caledonian Pipe Band organization of Dundee. Remarkably, the church is allowing BYOB, so […]
With firsts from all eight judges, Canterbury Caledonian Society enjoyed a convincing win at the 2026 New Zealand Championships, held in perfect conditions at the TET Stadium & Events Centre in the small town near New Plymouth on the country’s North Island. It was the band’s first big prize under recently appointed pipe-major, Piers Dover.
The pipe band legend of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Canada leaves us at age 92.
“A musician’s job is to perform to the best of their ability in front of tens, hundreds, or thousands of people, and being able to hear themselves is essential to producing the best possible performance. To the audience, if the performer cannot hear themself, the sound from a particular instrument will be unbalanced and dominant.”
Australia’s Victorian Pipers Association held their annual Online Solo Piping Competition, and it was Jono Quay who was the overall A Grade winner, Campbell Wilson in the B Grade, C Grade: Finley Parsons, Charlotte Donovan in the D Grade, and the overall Novice champion was Jonno Zilber.
John Elliott had an essential role in that explosion in the 1970s and ’80s and was one of the first North American players to move to Scotland for more than a year just to play in a top Grade 1 band. Joining seven-time World Champions Muirhead & Sons under Pipe-Major Bob Hardie proved to be an immersive experience that would pay dividends for the Canadian pipe band scene and inspire others to follow his lead.
Grade 2 Moorabbin City were the winners in the top contested grade at the Haileybury Pipe Band Competition, where a total of 31 bands competed across all grades. Grade 1 Hawthorn performed a Medley and MSR for judges’ comments as the only band in the top grade.
The Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association’s 2026 annual general meeting was attended by about 40 bands, both in-person and online, or about 16% of RSPBA member-bands based in the UK. (Non-UK bands competing in RSPBA contests must be paid “International” members and have no voting rights.) According to several sources […]