Composer, arranger and piper Craig Muirhead is offering copies of his popular bagpipe arrangement of ‘Over the Rainbow’ in return for a donation to the National Health Service. Craig writes: ‘I did a wee arrangement of the famous Judy Garland song from the ‘Wizard of Oz’ and it’s on my Facebook page. It’s had a lot of attention and requests for the music. ‘Would it be possible to mention in…

In the first excerpt of his interview Stephen Creighton, Leading Drummer of the World Championship winning St Laurence O’Toole corps, talked of sweeping the boards in Grade 2 at the 1990 Worlds with the St Joseph’s band. But now he wanted more…… We were asked to go to Grade 1 the following season by our own association [the Irish Pipe Band Association] but we chose not to because we didn’t feel…

Helen Urquhart of the NPC has sent this… The Board of The National Piping Centre is delighted to announce that Steven Blake (above) has been appointed to the role of Director for The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland. As the new director of The NYPBoS, Steven brings his wealth of performance, composition and recording experience to this challenging role.  Steven, a graduate of our piping degree, is a hugely…

The French government have banned all gatherings of more than 5,000 people until September and the Lorient Festival Interceltique, the world’s biggest celtic music festival, has had to be cancelled for 2020, it was announced this morning. Lorient had hoped to buck the trend of summer cancellations afflicting the piping and music worlds. Only a couple of weekes ago they were still hopeful of staging the festival. In a statement,…

The promoters of the popular Balmoral Summer Schools in the US have sent this: Coming soon to a desktop near you! The Balmoral School of Piping & Drumming will hold its 2020 summer school sessions via Zoom. Joining us through the magic of the internet will be three acclaimed instructors from Scotland, Ireland and Nova Scotia, all with incomparable records of teaching and promoting pipe music around the world.  From…