Archive

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 […]

Featuring a poster with a Quebec fleur-de-lis, a British Columbia grizzly bear, and the proverbial Canadian maple leaf, the Grade 1 78th Fraser Highlanders of Ontario, Canada, will return to mount the Pre-Worlds concert for the first time since 2003, then under their legendary pipe-major, Bill Livingstone. “True North Strong” […]

The Glengarry Pipe Band will celebrate 65 years since its founding in 1961 as a community group in a sparsely populated region in eastern Ontario, rich with Scottish heritage and culture. The Glengarry Pipe Band 65th Anniversary Reunion & Fundraiser on May 2nd at the Metcalfe Centre in Maxville, Ontario, […]

Steven McElhaney of Sacramento, California, was the big winner at the fifteenth annual Redding Solo Piping Competitions, winning the Grade 1 aggregate and thus earning an invitation to the Sandy Jones Memorial Amateur Championship in Florida. The overall awards were won by Katya Teodorovich (Grade 2), Brian Schwartzberg (Grade 3), Rees Parker (Grade 4) and Bill Bailey (Grade 5).

If you had the opportunity to listen to the outright artistry that achieved a combined seven Glenfiddich Championships, seven Northern Meeting Clasps, three Former Winners MSR Silver Stars and two World Solo Drumming Championships in a friendly recital setting, you’d probably go if you could, wouldn’t you? Scotland’s Grade 2 […]

After the 2022 competition season, the Grade 2 MacKenzie Caledonian of Dundee, Scotland, decided to shut down while the band sought to recruit new leaders and personnel. The expansive Mac-Cal pipe band organization continued with its lower-grade bands. But rather than ask to move down a grade or even dissolve, […]

The Pipers & Pipe Band Society of Ontario has dropped its tick-box quadrant feedback system implemented in 2004 for solo piping and drumming competitors in favour of a single option for a judge to check when he or she feels the contestant performed above the standard of the grade. The […]

At its most recent meeting, the nine members of the Alliance of North American Pipe Band Associations agreed to work toward standardizing competition-playing requirements for all associations beginning in 2027. The playing requirements would mirror those set out by the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association, except for Grade 5, which […]

Fifty-one bands and 10 quartets from 172 schools across Scotland gathered at the William McIlvanney Campus for the 2026 Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships, the largest entry yet over the 12 times the event has been held.