I judged the United States Piping Foundation Professional Piobaireachd with Paula Glendinning on Saturday 20th June. It is one of the major US competitions and continues in memory of its founder, Maclean Macleod.
By Dr Jack Taylor MBE
It has moved from Delaware to Maryland, and is superbly organised now by Peter Kent, Michael Rogers and their committee. You may have read Michael’s report and full results on Piping Press on Sunday.
Seventeen entered for the professional piobaireachd. Nick Hudson withdrew, his baby daughter having arrived just a few days before.
Bruce Gandy won with Lament for Macleod of Colbeck. He gave it his own individualistic and thoughtful interpretation, with pipe and finger top league. Captivating.
Close behind was Ben McClamrock (another recent dad!). Lament for Airds with all its Bs and Ds could be dreich. In Ben’s hands it wasn’t. He kept it moving and varied. His inclusion of the Campbell Canntaireachd ‘coda’ in line three did nothing to disturb the performance.
Derek Midgley was third with MacDonalds are Simple. This is a much shorter piece, and Derek’s inclusion of a Taorluath a Mach stretched it out well. His ground and dithis were spacious and unhurried, but did he faintly over cut the short notes in the following variation?
Then Andrew Zhao. A pupil of the splendid piping programme at St Thomas’s Episcopal School, Houston, Texas, Andrew struck up a bold, resonant pipe to give a brisk and confident Phantom Piper of Corrieyairack.
I’d think that Captain John MacLellan, the composer and a brisk player himself, would have been pleased. Andrew maybe just overdid it, and especially he might have given those pause marks in variation 1 a bit more of a stretch.
The Iolaire disaster was an indescribable tragedy. Bobby Durning’s smooth and poised interpretation of Donald MacLeod’s tribute lamented it well. Just a couple of fluffy dares in the ground.
All the other performances were strong, and it was pleasing to hear so many young players with mature understanding. John Bottomley, at the other end of the age spectrum, gave a smooth and musical Park Piobaireachd No.2, marred only by small technical blemishes and a wrong passing note.
Paula and I tried out Colin MacLellan’s ‘numbers’ judging scheme [check it out here]. It is designed to end the vexed issues surrounding judging and teaching.
Though neither Paula nor I had pupils competing, we independently ranked our top eight, put that aside, had the usual judge’s discussion, and then gave the result to the organiser.
Afterwards we returned to our independent rankings and did the counting. The top four names were the same by both methods. First was clearly the same, with the mathematical method giving a minor difference in 2, 3 and 4. 5-8 were tied, so would have been discussed anyway to give us our fifth place.
I would encourage other panels to experiment with Colin’s proposal.
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