Month: January 2016

Can You Take Highland Games Out of the Highlands?

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Longing for summer? Missing those glorious days at the Games, piping midst all the fun of the fair? Here US piper and enthusiast Peter Beckford looks back on his trip during the Summer of ’15 and compares games on both sides of the Atlantic….. I’ve never been to a Highland games as an impartial spectator. I go for the piping, as a competitor in the US, or parent and fan….

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PP Editor’s Blog: Setting Modern Tunes for Ceol Mor Competition

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I agree with Dr Hester on the need to encourage and promote modern piobaireachd. It is something I have done all my piping life through Duncan Johnstone’s ‘Lament for Alan’, John MacKenzie’s ‘Salute to the Soldier’, playing the tunes of John MacLellan, and in many other ways. Without new works the art stagnates. Two comparatively modern tunes ‘The Phantom Piper of the Corrieyairick’ and a ‘A Son’s Salute to His Parents’ have…

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Famous Pipers: P/M Alasdair Gillies – ‘The Day I Was Ordered from the Northern Meeting Stage’

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We continue with our interview with P/M Alasdair Gillies from 1999. In it he talks of the infamous occasion when he was ordered from the stage by one of the adjudicators and a former Piping Convenor of the Northern Meeting, the highly respected Lt. Colonel DJS Murray….. ‘1991 will always be remembered. I was red carded from the Gold Medal. I had bet my old man I would be teetotal…

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Wheel of Fortune Announces Line-Up of Top Pipers

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Lothian and Borders branch band, The City of Edinburgh, has announced the line-up for the 2016 Pipe Majors’ Wheel of Fortune competition. The band has sent this: ‘Brian Lamond, a former Pipe Major of Dysart and Dundonald and a member of the Victoria Police Pipe Band which won the World’s in 1998, will return to defend the title he won in 2015.  From Dunfermline in Fife, Brian will be joined by…

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