Editor’s Notebook

A lovely looking set of old ivory Lawrie pipes (pictured) are for sale today on the PP Online Advertising page. Check them out here.

If you have pipes to sell you can support free access to Piping Press by taking out a similar ad with us. They are only £25 and you are guaranteed to reach thousands of prospective buyers.


Thanks to correspondent Duncan Watson for forwarding these cuttings from the Daily Mail about Saturday’s Aboyne Games:

Duncan writes: ‘The piper is John MacDougall Snr., father of the late John MacDougall, Bucksburn/Kincraig of ‘Highland hoover’ fame. The children are Lady Lemina and Master Granville who were the children of the then Marquis of Huntly. 

‘The little lad, has now the title of Lord Aboyne and is one of the main patrons of the Aboyne Games. The article in the paper features a man Duncan Mackintosh who resides in the USA and whose great grandfather was a founder member of the games in 1867. Mr Duncan Mackintosh is to attend the forthcoming games to be held on 3rd August.

‘Every effort should be made to preserve our games traditions with solo piping as an integral part of it.’ Hear, hear to that Duncan.

Aboyne Games are on Saturday. I don’t know iof entries are still being accepted but pipers can contact the convenor Dr Jack Taylor here.


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The Lorient Festival in Brittany starts tomorrow. Scottish organiser Tom Johnstone has sent details of the piping participants from Scotland.

Main events for piping are the McCrimmon Trophy, Lorient Piobaireachd, Kitchen Piping contest, a Master Class, the Grande Nuit de Cornemeuse and Pipe Band Contest.

Judges from Scotland this year are: Ian Duncan, Roddy McDonald and John Scullion. Scottish pipers are Stuart Liddell, William McCallum and Fred Morrison.

For the Grande Nuit de Cornemeuse we have Fred Morrison and Bridghe Chaimbeul. The MasterClass will be conducted by Ian Duncan, RS McDonald and Fred Morrison. Pipe Bands: from Scotland we have Glencorse Pipe Band and playing along with them in the stadium the City of Adelaide Pipe Band.

There is over £4,000 in prize money in the MacCrimmon Trophy alone with first getting €1,320 which, given the current exchange rate, works out at £1,320 or more. For the piobaireachd it’s €450 for first, three tunes asked and three minutes tuning.


Piper Ross Jennings has been on the BBC to talk about his plan to play the pipes in every country in the world. Good luck with that Ross. Check out the story here.


To finish here’s a snap from 20 years ago. It was taken on the veldt outside Johannesburg in 1999 during my piobaireachd class there for the the Scottish Piping Society of the Witwatersrand.

The pipers are Dave Mason (recent winner of the John Cruickshank composing competition), Simon Workman, a young lad then but now doing a lot of good work for piping in SA (pass on my regards to your father Simon), Chris Terry, doyen of South African piping, RW, Cyril Hall, Zimbabwe, Nicholas Taitz, regular PP Correspondent, Peter Holgreaves, John Decker now in New Zealand, and Justin Carter.

It was a great school. Tunes round the campfire at night, dark skies and a million stars……

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