Archive

Alastair Lee of Surrey, British Columbia, edged out Zephan Knichel, also of Surrey, to take the Open Solo Piping aggregate trophy at the Pacific Northwest Highland Games. Simon Fraser University was the overall winner in the Grade 1 band competitions, with St. Thomas Alumni travelling from Houston to come away with a win in the MSR against the perennial World Championship contenders.

Simon Fraser University and St. Thomas Alumni shared the first prizes at the Pacific Northwest Highland Games at the Enumclaw Expo Center near Seattle.

Stuart Easton of Palmerston North, New Zealand, hopped across the water to compete in the Victorian Pipers’ Association’s Victorian Championships and Australian Piobaireachd medals at Presbyterian Ladies’ College and came away with a perfect day, winning all four of the events he entered. More than AUD$5,000 in prize money was awarded across all of the grades, and about 60 solo pipers participated in the competitions.

The Glengarry Highland Games will celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary on August 2-3 in Maxville, Ontario, with the help of Truro, Nova Scotia’s 6/8 march, the winner of a composing contest the games put on. From about 35 entries, Dupuis’s four-parter was chosen best by a panel of pipers and fiddlers […]

The Scottish Championships returned to their familiar Levengrove Park location, in sight of the famous Dumbarton Rock. Inveraray & District were the Grade 1 winners, the band’s first major championship win of the year.

Canadian piping and pipe band legend Ken Eller passed away on July 26, 2024, at the age of 77, following a long illness. A constant and ubiquitous presence on the Ontario piping and drumming scene, he gained worldwide fame as pipe-major of the Grade 1 Clan MacFarlane Pipe Band, one […]

Ross Miller is one of the world’s most creative and dynamically skilled pipers. He’s taking the stage with his band in Glasgow on Monday, August 12th, at the Hug & Pint on Great Western Road for a gig leveraging the throng of enthusiasts attending the Piping Live! Glasgow International Festival […]

Mount Hood Community College was once again the venue for the Portland Highland Games. The event has run for more than 60 years as part of the British Columbia Pipers Association’s competition circuit. Northwest Junior was the overall winner in the Grade 4 band competition, and Alastair Lee of Surrey, British Columbia, had the best day in the small Open Solo Piping events.

Artificial intelligence applications can potentially touch virtually every aspect of life as we know it. In a series of two articles, piper and computer scientist professional Colin Johnstone looks at two ways in which AI might positively assist in the process of judging our competitions.

The series of in-person and online competitions run throughout the year by CLASP (the Competition League for Amateur Solo Pipers) ended after the Inveraray Highland Games in Inveraray, Scotland, on July 17th. Thus, the overall champions for each grade were determined: Grade 1: Edmund Boland, Ireland (piobaireachd preference) Grade 2: […]

We’re pleased to bring pipes|drums readers, viewers and listeners videos of the Grade 2 medley competition at the 2024 Cambridge Highland Games, held on July 20th at Churchill Park in Cambridge, Ontario.

The Cambridge Highland Games, which often suffers from oppressive heat or torrential rain, enjoyed magnificent weather for a welcomed change as the Peel Regional Police Pipe Band won the five-band Grade 2 medley contest. Sean McKeown of Bowmanville, Ontario, was the Professional Solo Piper of the Day, and MacKenzie Chamberlain was the Professional Snare Drummer of the Day.

Ben Duncan of Edinburgh continued his run of success around the Scottish solo circuit by winning two of the three events at the Mull Highland Games under an incessant soaking with several hard downpours shaking things up for good measure. Angus D. MacColl of Benderloch, Scotland, won the Piobaireachd.

The relatively small and highly congenial Kamloops Highland Games returned to the British Columbia Pipers Association competition circuit for the first time since 2019 under warm and dry conditions in the scenic town in south-central British Columbia at the confluence of the North and South Thompson Rivers. There were no pipe band events but a good turnout by amateur soloists.

We continue with the seventh installment of 10 “Castle Recordings” piobaireachds in our exclusive series of performances captured on reel-to-reel tape at Edinburgh Castle in the early 1960s by the late Captain John A. MacLellan MBE.

With muggy temperatures soaring to the mid-30s in normally cool Cape Breton, the 159th Antigonish Highland Games were memorable and even historic on several fronts. The Grade 1 78th Highlanders (Halifax Citadel) made a strong statement by ditching waistcoats/vests and neckties for comfortable open-neck polo shirts, long-serving Atlantic Canada Pipe Band Association Chief Steward Rick Crawford made his retirement official with a special presentation, and Ajax, Ontario’s Sean McKeown ended 25 consecutive years of either Bruce or Alex Gandy winning the aggregate award in the Open/Professional Solo Piping.