Editor’s Notebook: Grade 1 Bands/ Scots Guards KO/ Scholarship/ Highland Pipers

Knowledgeable attendees are reporting a very high standard of performance at last week’s band contest at Huntly, Aberdeenshire. I’m told four Grade 2 bands, Buchan Peterson, Grampian Police, Texo Deeside and Bucksburn, would not disgrace themselves in Grade 1.

Given the dwindling numbers in that grade, this has to be good news. This week’s G1 draw for the British Championships at Ingliston on May 30 sports a grand total of only nine bands:

1 SLOT 2 Police Federation 3 FMM 4 Shotts 5 Boghall 6 Fife Police 7 Inveraray 8 Scottish Power 9 Ravara. (Judges: Robert Mathieson, Cameron Edgar, Paul Turner and Jim Semple.)

That number will be further reduced at the Euros in Perth on June 27 with Inveraray signed up for concerts in the US.

Two things need to happen: 1 The speedy introduction of a cap on numbers as proposed at the RSPBA AGM and currently being looked at, 2 A more generous approach to bands at the top end of Grade 2. I still don’t understand why Glasgow Skye were not promoted last year after winning the G2 Worlds.

Elsewhere the numbers for the British are healthy: 18 in Novice B, 12 in Novice A, 18 in 4B, 15 in 4A, six in Juvenile, 15 in 3B, 19 in 3A and 13 in G2. (Full draw here.)

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Scots Guards KO
Jimmy Banks: ‘The first semi-final of this year’s Knock Out competition is this Sunday, 26th April, when the pipers will be Scott McCaskill and  Christopher McCarten. As usual it is a 4pm start at the Scots Guard’s Club, Haymarket, Edinburgh. All welcome. Refreshments available; tickets at door.’

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Scholarship
The Jimmy McIntosh Piobaireachd Scholarship Committee: ‘From a record number of applications we have selected Aidan Chapman, Windsor Mill, Maryland, for the 2026-2027 session. 

‘Aidan’s piobaireachd instruction will begin in late May with an intensive piobaireachd weekend in Baltimore, taught by one of Jimmy’s most successful students, Mike Cusack.

‘Following this, instructors who are working closely with the scholarship committee will be chosen to work with Aidan for the remainder of 2026, into early 2027 culminating with a piobaireachd workshop at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in February of 2027, at which he will give a recital to include tunes he has learned during the course of the instruction. The Winter Workshop is open to all and is expertly organised by the Pittsburgh Piping Society, in conjunction with the Jimmy McIntosh Scholarship Committee. We are extremely thankful for the generous support of The Piobaireachd Society.’

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Band Reminder
The British Championships deadline is now passed but the others are approaching fast:

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Highland Pipers
The PP library has a clipping from the Edinburgh Evening News. Unfortunately there is no date on it but from the names and regiments we can deduce that it is from the late 1950s. (The Seaforths and Camerons amalgamated in 1961.) It reads: An ‘eight-hour’ open piping and Highland dancing contest, under the auspices of the Highland Pipers’ Society of Edinburgh, was held in the Drill Hall, Gilmore Place, on Saturday. Mr HS Shield, Hon. Chieftain of the Society, presided, and the judges were Mr Angus Macpherson, Inveran, and Mr Duncan MacColl, Glasgow.

There were 14 entrants for the piobaireachd, 16 for the marches and 16 for the strathspey and reel. Results were: Piobaireachd – 1 Donald MacPherson, Glasgow 2 Sergeant MacKay, Camerons 3 P/M John MacLellan, Seaforths 4 John Garroway, Glasgow Police

Marches – 1 P/M MacLellan, Seaforths 2 Pipe Major Donald MacLeod, Seaforths, 3 Sergeant MacKay, Camerons 4 DP MacGillivray, Nigg

Strathspey & Reel – 1 Peter MacFarquhar, Glasgow 2 P/M MacLellan, Seaforths 3 Pipe Major MacLeod, Seaforths 4 DP MacGillivray, Nigg

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