Archive
The Bleary & District Pipe Band of Northern Ireland will return to competition in the 2013 UK season after a seven-year . . .
raig Sked was the overall winner based on preference to the Piobaireachd event at the 100 Guineas Solo Piping Championship at King Edward’s VII High School. Eleven of South Africa’s top solo pipers competed in the event.
We continue our exclusive discussion with Roddy MacLeod, one of the world’s great builders of piping. In Part 1, MacLeod remembered his earliest years as a young piper in Cumbernauld, Scotland. In Part 2, MacLeod looks back on his formative piping years with his teacher, the legendary Duncan Johnstone. He goes into his early pipe band days with the Grade 1 Red Hackle in Glasgow under Pipe-Major Malcolm MacKenzie, leading to his long tenure with British Caledonian Airways / Power of Scotland / ScottishPower and the Spirit of Scotland, and the importance of strong soloists in the mix. He then touches on why he is not a judge with the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association.
Scott Barrie in the 15 and under 18 category and Joshua Townsley in the 14 and under enjoyed solid days at the annual Inveraray & District Piping Society’s Junior Competitions held at the town’s Primary School. All prizewinners were from Scotland . . .
Callum Beaumont emerged the aggregate winner of the 20th annual Donald MacLeod Memorial Invitational Solo Piping Competition in his first win at the event that honours the great piper’s career and compositions. Beaumont tied with Stuart Liddell of Inveraray, Scotland, and Willie McCallum of Bearsden, Scotland. The result of the Piobaireachd event, which Beaumont won, determined the prize. The list from the Hornpipe & Jig contest does not factor into the overall award . . .
Andy Ross, one of the most popular chanter reed-makers in piping history, died on April 2, 2013, after a protracted illness . . .
Canterbury Caledonian of Christchurch won its second straight New Zealand & South Pacific Pipe Band Championship, held in the small town of Timaru in the country’s South Island.
Dylan Whittemore was the winner in the A Division Piping (Grade 1 and 2) at the final of the PPBSO Toronto Branch Amateur Knockout, held at Mosspark Armoury in Canada’s biggest city’s downtown. Charles-David Mitchell won the B Division, open to Grade 3 and 4 players.
Seven years after it originally implemented it, the Pipers & Pipe Band Society of Ontario has eliminated its practice of consultative pipe band judging, a topic of active debate for . . .
Shotts & Dykehead is now officially once again Shotts & Dykehead, as one of the world’s most storied pipe bands has ended its . . .
Nova Scotia Antigonish Highland Games, one of the world’s oldest and longest-running piping, drumming . . .
Will Nichols of Blaine, Washington, and Graham Haddon of Langley, British Columbia, won the British Columbia Pipers Association . . .
After months of deliberations, Grade 2 bands in Ontario will be allowed to “challenge up” at select contests, going head-to-head against bands in the top grade ¨C but only if there are three or fewer bands competing in Grade 2, and only where the Grade 1 event . . .
The first South African solo event of the year, run by the ISH Piping Society of the Witwatersrand, was the Pipe-Major Alexander “Sandy” Mallen Memorial Solo Piping Competition, held at King Edward VII School, Johannesburg . . .
With patent-pending features that “herald a new dawn for pipe band tenor drumming,” TyFry Ultimate tenor drum mallets . . .
We bring our subscribers an exclusive interview with arguably Highland piping’s most professional and well-rounded personality. An extraordinary competitor, a leader of Grade 1 pipe bands, the original and existing Director of the National Piping Centre and the co-founder and leader of the Piping Live!