Archive
What a difference a year makes for the storied Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band of Scotland as the historic band enters the 2013 season . . .
After a long, cold, lonely winter, the Scottish outdoor pipe band season gets started across all grades on May 11th and 12th at Dunbar and Gourock . . .
Callum Beaumont won the Clasp event at the annual R.U. Brown Piobaireachd Society Solo Piping Competitions held at Black Friars Priory School, where . . .
In the third instalment of our exclusive interview with Roddy MacLeod, the Director of the National Piping Centre and the Piping Live! Glasgow International Festival of Piping discusses in detail the relationship with Glasgow’s College of Piping. He looks back to the origins of the Piping Centre, when the late Seumas MacNeill had a central role in its beginnings, only to fall out over a leadership disagreement. In Part 3, among many other topics, MacLeod takes an inward look at his career, and his professional contributions to the art.
The resurrected and popular Montreal Highland Games & Celtic Festival and its legendary beer tent will not happen in 2013 after . . .
Jim McGillivray continues his exclusive series with Reay Mackay’s hornpipe, composed as a kid in 1954. Subscribers to pipes|drums can enjoy the original manuscript of the tune, a classic image of a very young Reay Mackay with Colin Mackay, and instructional scores and sound files of McGillivray on the Deger pipe.
Transvaal Scottish continued their winning streak by taking the first South African Championship points of the season at the South Coast Highland Gathering at Hutcheson Park in Amanzimtoti on the south coast of Durban on a sunny autumn day with temperatures reaching 30 degrees . . .
Simon Fraser University Pipe Band leaders Terry Lee and Jack Lee will have more than great . . .
The College of Piping played host to the annual Atlantic Piobaireachd Challenge while the Antigonish Highland Society’s attentions were on the 150th anniversary of the Antigonish Highland Games this year. Seventeen competed in the various grades, and all contestants had to submit tunes set for this year’s major gatherings. Jack Lee judged all events and conducted a workshop the following day.
The Brandon Highland Festival this year marked the return of the event after a year off, and also the 20th anniversary of the City of Regina Pipe Band, whose first-ever band contest was the same event in 1993. The Grade 2 St. Andrew’s Society of Winnipeg Pipe Band was unable to make the event.
John Frater was the overall winner of the annual Royal Scottish Pipers Society Competition held at the organization’s rooms on Rose Street Lane South in the heart of Edinburgh. The event is reserved for RSPS members, all of whom do not usually compete and never for prize-money.
We take a look at 15 of the world’s most active pipe band associations and compare the dues that they charge to pipe bands and/or individuals and the charges for entry into collective competitions and/or single events. We also consider online entry and how they communicate with their members. The result is an illuminating summary of a wide array of costs, with one organization looking for a band of 35 pipers and drummers to pay more than $1,500 just to compete on their circuit during a calendar year.
The Kingston Scottish Festival continues to grow to the point of being bigger than at least two other full outdoor Highland games on the Ontario competitive piping and drumming . . .
Pat Lynch reviews “Forte – Live at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall,” the new DVD by the Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia Pipe Band of their August 2012 Pre-World’s Concert performance
The fifth annual Kingdom Thistle Solo Piping & Drumming Championships were held again at Lochgelly High School, with competitors coming from far and wide for the event. A tenor drumming event was introduced this year. Overall Open champions were Emmett Conway in solo piping and Aaron McLean in solo snare drumming, with both competitors travelling to Fife from Northern Ireland. Organizers counted 189 combined performances and a total audience of more than 400 turning out on the day . . .
The ILT City of Invercargill of New Zealand is one of the oldest pipe bands in the antipodes and, with several years in Grade 2, was recently . . .