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North Stratton, Craig Sutherland and Robert Graham were the big winners at ScotFestBC, also known as the British Columbia Highland Games. Grade 2 was the top contested pipe band competition, North Stratton winning both events against two other entrants. Sutherland enjoyed a perfect sweep in the Open solo piping, the Piobaireachd held on Friday, and the MSR and Hornpipe & Jig on Saturday, and Graham won both Open snare drumming events.

When Terry Tully talks, you’d be wise to listen. How the legendary piper, composer, teacher and pipe-major is leading the IPBA into a new era.

Grade 1 at RSPBA-sanctioned events in the UK saw another winner, after Police Scotland Fife received three out of four first-place rankings in the seven-band competition at the annual Lochore (Benarty) Highland Games at Lochore Meadows Country Park in the Kingdom of Fife. Four bands officially categorized as Grade 2 played up in the MSR event.

Sean McKeown won the Professional Piper of the Day aggregate on a sunny and warm day at the Northumberland Scottish Festival & Highland Games, the third outdoor event of the Ontario season. Kyle Wardell was the Professional Drummer of the Day. In the amateurs, Jean-Sebastien Gamache won the Grade 1 aggregate, and Aidan Hogan won the overall across the Grade 1 amateur snare events.

Bruce Gandy of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, won the 37th United States Piping Foundation Amateur & Professional Piping Championships at the Roselle Center for the Arts at the University. Gandy was awarded the overall prize – his eighth – on a Piobaireachd preference to break a tie with Houston’s Nick Hudson.

We continue our exclusive five-part pipes|drums Interview with Eric Rigler of Los Angeles, by far the most-heard Celtic musician in history. In Part 1 of the pipes|drums Interview with Los Angeles native Eric Rigler, he discussed his early years and the factors that led him to want to move to Scotland to study piping and […]

Matt Fraser hopes to make practice a win-win for pipers and drummers who want to gain an edge using his MusoLink app. The pipe-major of Grade 1 Hawthorn of Melbourne, Australia, launched the MusoLink app last November, and now, as the World Championships and other big-time competitions approach for bands […]

Exclusively for subscribers, an in-depth and insightful assessment of the latest full-length pipe band recording.

We’re pleased to present videos of the Grade 2 competition and Grade 1 performance at the Georgetown Highland Games on June 14, 2025.

It’s probably purely coincidental that the Commonwealth Pipes & Drums logo features a Minuteman, a Revolutionary War private soldier ready to fight for fair representation. Still, after a six-month process, the Massachusetts-based band will be permitted to compete at the 2025 World Championships as the Grade 3A group they are under the Eastern United States Pipe Band Association, the band’s home association.

Moira Demesne, a park in the picturesque village of Moira, Northern Ireland, was the venue for the 2025 Lisburn & Castlereagh Championships, the latest event in the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association Northern Ireland Branch circuit of competitions.

Ulster Scottish from Philadelphia was the top winner at the 2025 Chicago Highland Games, the Midwest Pipe Band Association’s largest sanctioned event of the year, and one of the biggest pipe band competitions by the number of contestants outside of the United Kingdom. Thirty-nine bands competed in sunny weather at DuPage County Fairgrounds.

After a tie was broken by the ensemble mark, Peoples Ford Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia won the first Edinburgh Pipe Band Competition, held at George Watson’s College, and put on by the Lothians & Borders Branch of the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association.

Father’s Day 2025 is the perfect time to officially announce the new “Gandy Bagpipe” by McCallum Bagpipes, an exact reproduction of the 1939 instrument played for many years by Ray Gandy in Victoria, British Columbia, then by Bruce Gandy and, most recently, by Alex Gandy. That makes three generations of Gandy […]

Immaculately sunny, breezy and warm weather benefited the 50th anniversary Georgetown Highland Games, where Florida’s City of Dunedin won Grade 2 against three other bands in the top competitive event.

King Charles III has made Northern Ireland’s George Ussher of Lisburn, Northern Ireland, a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) and Roderick Buchanan of Lochgilphead, Scotland, and Angus Tulloch of Kingussie, Scotland, Members of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours. […]