Month: December 2015

A Look Back at 2015 with Editor Robert Wallace

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Yesterday we received the annual facts and figures from our web host and they made pleasant and satisfying reading. 400,000 visits from 156 countries in 12 months cannot be bad, and I would like to thank all of our readers and advertisers for their support. It is clear that you approve of a web magazine that educates, informs, criticises and entertains – and always with the highest journalistic standards. I know…

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Famous Pipers: P/M Alasdair Gillies In His Own Words – Part 3

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We continue our ‘Famous Pipers’ column with the third part of our look back at the life and career of the late P/M Alasdair Gillies, renowned solo piper and last Pipe Major of the Queen’s Own Highlanders. What you will read is from an interview with the man himself for Piper Press magazine, the forerunner to Piping Press, in 1999. Alasdair has already talked of his annual obsession with the Northern Meeting….

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PP Editor’s Blog: Wm Sinclair/ Northern Meeting 1990/ US Scholarship/ Letter

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Mentioning Duncan Campbell as one of the old school of Scottish bagpipe makers  reminded me of a visit to Edinburgh a few weeks ago when I was able to call in to the Wm Sinclair workshop in Leith. In all my piping years I’d never been before and it was a pleasure to meet Alastair Sinclair, the present proprietor, a master craftsmen who is carrying on the fine tradition of…

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78th Fraser Highlanders Concert Remembered

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Our main feature today is an article by Northern Ireland piper Kenny Stewart on the historic concert given by Bill Livingstone’s 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band in Ballymena, Ken’s home town, in 1987. Ken tells us of the origins of the show, how it was organised and how the band impressed so many people with their playing only a few days before they lifted the World Champion crown, the first…

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Famous Pipers: Pipe Major Alasdair Gillies, Part 2

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Alasdair talks of his early years and how he developed his….. Love Affair With the Northern Meeting at Inverness By P/M Alasdair Gillies My association with the Northern Meeting, is short in comparison with Corriechoillie (43 visits according to the tune title), but quite eventful. Living in Ullapool after the family had moved from Glasgow in 1975, I had been winning some prizes at the Highland games round the north. My father…

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