Callum Beaumont won the 2021 Donald MacDonald Cuach for Piobaireachd at the competition held online on Friday 11 June. Convenor Dr Angus MacDonald hosted the competition live from the museum at Armadale Castle, with the five pipers playing from their respective homes.
Callum lives in Dollar, Clackmannanshire, and is a piping instructor at Dollar Academy.
This is the second time he has won the prestigious piobaireachd prize, having also won in 2017. He played Donald MacDonald’s setting of Cumha Mhic a h-Arasaig (MacKintosh’s Lament).
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Adjudicator Dr Jack Taylor praised the musicality and technique of all five pipers. He commented: ‘They were really five winning performances, and five very different performances. They chose tunes of different difficulty and melodic attractiveness and that contributed to the difficulty of making the judgement.’ He praised the way in which winning Callum Beaumont took a well-known tune ‘by the scruff of the neck’ and played it with impeccable technique.
The other four competitors in the invitation competition were Glenn Brown, Finlay Johnston, Andrew Hayes and Stuart Liddell. Viewers tuned in from as far afield as Texas, Nova Scotia and Sweden to watch on Facebook live.
The competition is available to view on Armadale Castle’s Facebook page.
