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. […]
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.”
Across all grades, 207 bands have entered the 2025 World Championships on August 15th and 16th at Glasgow Green, Glasgow, an increase of three over last year’s event. As pipes|drums concluded in April, 14 bands are entered in Grade 1, the same number as in 2024. Five non-UK bands are […]
The prominent Canadian piper and pipe-major William John “Bill” Gilmour died on June 7, 2025, at 88. Gilmour is one of the most accomplished pipers in Canadian history. In addition to serving with the Canadian military for decades, including as pipe-major of the Royal Canadian Air Force Pipe Band, one […]
While the World Championships are by far the biggest competition in the pipe band world, they have come at the cost of continually declining attendance at the smaller events and even other major championships, as bands increasingly focus on and invest in succeeding at or simply attending the World Championships. […]
With eight first-place rankings from the eight judges, Greighlan Crossing were the easy overall winners of the Grade 3 band competition, the top-graded event at the annual Penticton Scottish Festival, held in sunny weather in the Southern Interior of British Columbia, the hub of the South Okanagan region on Canada’s west coast.
A 10-minute skip and a hop from the main action of the Piping Live! festival on August 10th will be a performance by the Ross Miller Band at the Stereo Glasgow, a historic building by Scotland’s great architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in Glasgow’s city centre. Miller is famous among Highland […]
Grade 1 Johnstone has started a search for a new leading-drummer after Gavin Orr announced he will resign after the 2025 World Championships. Orr had been lead-drummer since late 2022, with Pipe-Major Donald Mackay running the band. He had been a corps drummer with Grade 1 Inveraray & District for […]
This August, Scotland’s Kyle Warren will release Play, his third collection of original compositions and arrangements. The book of 50 tunes, all by Warren, follows Tunez (2010) and EAT SLEEP PIPE REPEAT (2020). A former member of Field Marshal Montgomery and the pipe-major of the then Grade 2 Hawthorn of […]
As part of R.G. Hardie & Co.’s news that they’ve remodelled and narrowed their extensive line of bagpipes, we received a video of Highland Society of London Gold Medallist and Glenfiddich light music champion Connor Sinclair playing a new set of redesigned Peter Henderson pipes. Along with the world-famous Callum […]
Originally from Crieff, Scotland, and now living in Glasgow, John Dew has a bachelor’s degree in traditional music from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He has been making a career as a music composer, arranger, and producer, in between playing with the Grade 1 Inveraray & District and vying for […]