I cannot see any reason why Colin MacLellan’s judging/teaching proposal should not be given at least a pilot run, a properly monitored assessment over several events. If it doesn’t work, well, fair enough, it’s back to the drawing board.
But gather the evidence, examine the pros and cons, and make a fact-based decision. If approved, we then leave it up to the promoters as to whether or not they wish to apply it.
Prima facie, I cannot see how Colin’s system would fail. Indeed some of us have already used a very similar system in the past to break an impasse on the bench.
As has been said elsewhere, any rule which forces the most qualified individuals to make a choice between judging or teaching has got to be harmful. Neither activity should be seen as mutually exclusive. Present rules are based on perceptions of bias. Competitors see a bent judge round every tent flap. How wrong they are.
Anyone querying whether top grade teaching is needed more than ever only has to sit through a few B grade competitions (and some P/A) to hear the falling off in standards. Yes the pipes are good and usually the fingers are passable, but interpretation? It can verge on the abysmal at times and I’m not just talking piobaireachd. It is astounding how many players display so little understanding of the basics of MSR idioms and how to present them.
The senior people are not teaching enough, it’s as simple as that. Of course they want to judge too, and so they should, but the current strictures are squeezing the life out of our duty to pass on what we know.
Plaid Brooch
Reader Robert Baker: ‘Reference the plaid brooch published last week, it is a very nice brooch. Third prize in the competition a snuff mull won by a Duncan Ross.
‘The stone may be rock crystal foil mounted in gold to make it appear as a cairngorm – which was common at the time.’
Roddy MacDonald: ‘I’m convinced that this brooch was owned by an ex-Scots Guards piper Bob Murphy and Malcolm Lay has confirmed this.
‘Bob ran an entertainment business in London and I visited his house on a few different occasions. His brother was P/M of a Kinross-based band.’
Iain Bruce
Malcolm McRae: Iain Bruce died on 4th June. He was 87. He had lived in Queensland all his life. He was an academic – a Professor at the University of Queensland, mathematics and statistics.
I don’t know much about his early piping career, although he had some tuition from Donald MacKinnon, who had been a piper with Donald MacLeod in the Seaforths before Donald MacKinnon [composer of the Sound of Sleat reel] emigrated to Queensland.
Iain visited Scotland in 1974, and had tuition from Jim McIntosh. He visited again in 1984 and wrote an account for the Piping Times – Vol. 37, Jan. 1985 (worth a look). He won prizes, maybe one at Oban or Inverness, during that visit. He was a devotee of the teaching of Brown and Nicol.
When Stephanie and I returned to live in Australia in 2004, we settled in Queensland not far from Iain, and weekly piping sessions with him and Roy Gunn (who had come to Queensland from Wellington, New Zealand) became the norm. Iain judged and taught over many years.
Iain had health problems for a couple of years before he died, but his memory for the finer points of a tune was undimmed. His wife Doreen had predeceased him by a few decades, and he left a daughter, Morag, and three grandchildren.
World Cup
Duncan MacGillivray: While the topic is still relevant, I thought I should alert you to a World Cup Piping Video which my eldest son Iain has put together. He did a media course at Sabhal Mòr many years ago which required him to make a couple of videos and provide original soundtracks.
He has put that knowledge together with his music and come up with what I feel is a pretty decent effort, which you and your readers might like to check out! He has linked up with the Dalmally-based Catholic charity Mary’s Meals, which provides children with meals in poor parts of the world…they did 980,000 meals in Haiti last year.
Iain is over in the Haven, Boston, just now, entertaining the Scottish troops on pipes and fiddle along with his guitar accompanist, Megan Mackay. The video is entitled ‘Kick Off’, by IDMacG:
