All roads lead to Oban today for tomorrow’s Highlands & Islands Festival. There are events for all grades and age groups in both senior and junior.
Venue is Oban High School from 9am. There is nothing to beat live music. The weather is set fair. There’s great sea food on the pier. Why not get in the car or jump on a bus and enjoy some West Highland air and top quality piping?
Duncan Johnstone Tune
Chris Mulinder, South Africa: Hi Rab. It’s taken me 30 years to eventually come up with a fourth part to Duncan Johnstone’s unusual tuning phrase. This is my effort. The tune is in his Book 1 last page and is titled ‘An Exercise’. See what you think.
I think that fits very well Chris. Now what gems will you come up with over the next 30 years?!
College Video
Andrea Jones: Great article on the College film, ‘Follow me…I’m Right Behind You’. I have the DVD. I watched it again in 2022 and thought to myself what a great thing it was. I got together several like-minded players, we put a band together, practiced once a month for seven months and went to the World’s and competed in 4b…all from watching the film!
We had a mix of juveniles and adults, kids and parents playing together and folks that had never played in a band before! We certainly didn’t set the grass on fire at Glasgow Green but it was an experience we will never forget! All due to that video!!!!
Piobaireachd Society
The Piobaireachd Society has a new Vice President, Peter McCalister, a Gold Medallist and a dedicated servant to the Society over many years. Also new in post is Karen McCrindle Warren who has become Honorary Treasurer. Karen is well known as a successful competitor and award-winning composer of piobaireachd.
Both Karen and Peter will be a boost to our ranks, no question. As President you have a lot of responsibility in running such a venerable organisation as the PS and it is only with the support of your members, your fellow office bearers, and with committees working together, that you actually get things done.
Our recent AGM heard that membership now exceeded 1,000 (join here) and that finances were in a strong position. The Society disbursed circa £14,000 in grants to competitions, workshops and recitals during its last fiscal year.
The AGM also heard that the five year project to revise the Society’s collection of Books 1-16, was nearing completion.
One last thing; we forgot to mention yesterday that the new John Macdonald, Inverness, book ‘Life, Times & Music’ had been donated to the Society by the author John Shone. We are very grateful to John for his kind gesture. We now have another valuable addition to our inventory of books.
