Archive
When BBC Scotland confirmed on July 1st that it would live-stream the first round of Grade 1 performances on the Friday of the World Pipe Band Championships, Britain’s public broadcaster could not say whether the Saturday would also be broadcast. The assumption is now reality as the network confirmed that […]
Readers younger than 30 might not be aware of the following records: From 1965 to 1969, Muirhead & Sons won five consecutive World Championships. The Strathclyde Police Pipe Band won six straight World’s from 1981 to 1986. The same band won 11 of 13 World Championships from 1979 to 1991, […]
The 49th running of the Glenfiddich Invitational Solo Piping Championship is scheduled to be held on October 29th at Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Scotland, with 10 of the world’s elite Highland pipers strutting their stuff before critical panels of judges and an enthusiastic in-person and online audience. Tickets are now […]
Following considerable outcry from the piping and drumming world after it came to light that the Grade 4B Sons of Holyland & District of Israel was unsuccessful with their entry to the 2022 World Pipe Band Championships, the RSPBA held a “specially convened” meeting of its board of directors and […]
New Ross, Ireland – July 2, 2022 – Better late than never, the All-Ireland Championships returned after a two-year hiatus, with Pearse Park in New Ross, Co. Down, the venue for the seventy-fifth running of the event, which started in 1946 as a way to bring Northern Ireland and the […]
Wellington, New Zealand – July 9, 2022 – Willie Rowe of Rata, New Zealand, won the Everest Cup in the piobaireachd event and Stuart Easton of Palmerston North, New Zealand took the Brown Cup at the 70th annual Wellington Pipers Club Brown Cup. Fourteen competed in the competition held at […]
We revisit R.S. MacDonald’s review of one of Highland piping’s major CD releases
The Grade 4B Sons of Holyland & District won’t compete at the World Pipe Band Championships in August, allegedly because of an administrative error by the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association or the band itself. After the draw for all grades at the World’s was revealed on the morning of […]
It’s fashionable these days to stress the positive, and, as usual, competition piping and drumming is no exception. Not too long ago, scoresheets were often a stream of negative comments dwelling on what were technical niggles or relatively minor hiccups. A lousy attack – in reality, a tiny part of […]
The two-year impact of the global pandemic has come into stark reality with only 145 bands entered across all grades at the 2022 World Pipe Band Championships to be held at Glasgow Green, Glasgow, August 12-13. With relatively few bands based outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland entered, and […]
Exclusively for subscribers, the evolution of Ross’s innovations that brought instrumental change to piping, the role that leaders like Terry Lee, Nat Russell and Bill Livingstone played, and the copycatting of his products.
The piping tradition in the village of Kilbarchan (population 3,300) in central Renfrewshire in the west central Lowlands of Scotland goes back to the 16th century, and the town’s pipe band was resurrected in 2002 competing with moderate success in Grade 4 ever since. But so far in 2022 the […]
Scotland’s annual Royal National Mòd – “Gaeldom’s premiere musical and cultural event” – will for the first time use the Competing Pipers Association’s grading for its solo piping competitions October 14-22 in Perth, Scotland. The event, staged in a different location every year, previously took a more traditional approach to […]
Embro and Kincardine, Ontario – July 1-2, 2022 – Canada Day conveniently landing on a Friday allowed for back-to-back competitions, starting with the Embro Highland Games, always held on the country’s national day of celebration, and the Kincardine Scottish Festival, annually staged on the first Saturday of July. Weather was […]
BBC Scotland has confirmed that the Friday Grade 1 events of the World Pipe Band Championships will once again be live-streamed. Britain’s public broadcaster confirmed to pipes|drums that the live Internet broadcast will happen once again, even though the Grade 1 competition promises to be 14 bands, with only four […]