Archive
After local funding had been cut for the Ulster Pipe Band & Drum-Major Championships earlier this year, the likelihood of the event happening in 2024 seemed remote. But the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association’s Northern Ireland Branch pulled out all the stops and has now secured the event for August […]
In honour of the 150th anniversary of the liberal arts institution’s founding, the Minnesota Scottish Fair & Highland Games returned to the Macalester College campus for the first time since 2003. The Macalester College Pipe Band took the top prize, the last event before the band competes at the European and World Championships in Scotland for the first time in its 75-year history. It was the band’s seventh win out of the last nine events dating back to 2023.
Ben Duncan of Edinburgh was nearly perfect, winning three events and placing second in the fourth, earning the overall Best Open Piper trophy at the Inveraray Highland Games, probably the biggest outdoor competition in the Scottish solo piping circuit. Steven Leask of Glasgow won the Open Piobaireachd.
As the band prepares to compete in Scotland, Greighlan Crossing won the top contested pipe band grade at a warm Skagit Valley Highland Games, winning both events. Alan Bevan was overall best in the Open solo piping, and Craig Sutherland, Cameron Bonar, and Jamie Kubasiewicz also came away with firsts. The events benefitted from Scottish judges in town as instructors at the Celtic Arts Foundation summer school.
The Grade 1 78th Highlanders (Halifax Citadel) of Nova Scotia have made a permanent switch to open-neck polo shirts as part of their uniform, choosing comfort over tradition and believed to be the first top-grade band to make the switch in the name of good playing and safety. “It was […]
The British Columbia Pipers Association continued its creative and thoughtful ways with Cameron Bonar of Surrey, British Columbia, winning the inaugural Skye Richendrfer Memorial Jig Competition. The event was created in honour of the late piper, contributor, and leader who died in 2022 of leukemia at the age of 64.
Stuart Easton of Palmerston North, New Zealand, and Hunterville, New Zealand’s Willie Rowe were the winners, respectively, of the annual Everest Piobaireachd and Brown Cup light music at the Wellington Pipers Club’s 72nd annual Brown Cup Competition at Scots College Wellington.
The days of top pipe bands having recording labels make commercial albums are well and truly over, so 2023 World Champions Peoples Ford Boghall & Bathgate Caledonia are reaching out to piping and drumming enthusiasts to help underwrite a live recording of the band’s “Cabar Fèidh” Pre-Worlds Concert on August […]
Craig Sutherland of Perth, Scotland, won the inaugural Gordon Duncan Memorial Kitchenpiping Solo Piping Competition at the 28th annual Skagit Valley Highland Games at the Skagit County Fairgrounds. Sixteen Open, Grade 1 and Grade 2 pipers competed. The Gordon Duncan Memorial Trust and the Celtic Arts Foundation sponsor the event.
The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland have opened for pipers and drummers ages 10 to 25 eager to join the highly successful performance-based program that brings together Scotland’s top young players. The National Piping Centre runs the program, and “provides unique opportunities for the top young players to connect, […]
If the total entry at the 2024 World Championships is an indication, the rebound of the competitive pipe band community post-pandemic shows a solid gain. 204 bands across all grades are set to compete at the August 16-17 competition at Glasgow Green in Glasgow, an increase of 14 bands over […]
Greighlan Crossing of Vancouver won Grade 3, the top contested grade at the Penticton Scottish Festival on an unseasonably hot, but increasingly normal, sunny day in BC’s interior, with temperatures in the mid-30sC.
The New South Wales border town of Albury was host to the Victorian Pipers Association’s comprehensive solo piping competition, where Jono Quay of Melbourne won four of the five A-Grade events in which he competed. Liam Nicolson, also from Melbourne, won the twice-through A-Grade March, Strathspey & Reel.
The Ottawa Highlanders made it two straight wins in Grade 2, taking the top contested band event at the Kincardine Scottish Festival. Ian K. MacDonald was best overall in the professional solo piping, and Kyle Wardell got the aggregate in the professional solo snare drumming.
In one of the closest All-Ireland Pipe Band Championships ever, St. Laurence O’Toole of Dublin won the title for the seventh time in the band’s history, tipping Northern Ireland’s Field Marshal Montgomery on MSR preference. The two bands split the overall Best Piping title.
After its cancellation in 2023, the prestigious Silver Chanter piobaireachd competition will return on August 7th, to be held at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college located on the remote Sleat peninsula on Skye. But for what would appear to be the first time in the event’s 57-year history, the […]