Herewith are the playing requirements for the major championships for season 2020 as agreed by the RSPBA’s Music Board: Also announced today are all the dates for the year beginning with Bangor, Northern Ireland on May 9 and running to the World Solo Drumming on October 24. Check out the calendar here.

Before another decade slips by we thought we’d have a look back at the 2009 Worlds when, on August 15th, Canada’s Simon Fraser University Pipe Band triumphed at Glasgow Green winning both the band contest and the drumming. Here’s a photo gallery of pictures from the great day for the lads and lassies from British Columbia, a day that saw them placed first in both Medley and MSR under P/M…

The Queen’s New Year’s Honour List has announced that Tom Brown, former leading drummer of Boghall and Bathgate Caledonia and tutor and mentor to hundreds of pipe band drummers, has been created a Member of the British Empire (MBE). The citation reads: ‘Thomas Johnston BROWN, Pipe Band Drummer and Instructor, Boghall and Bathgate Caledonia Pipe Band. For services to Scottish Traditional Music.’ Boghall and Bathgate owe much of their current…

We’ll be back after the break with the very best in piping and pipe band journalism. We value your support and that of our advertisers and contributors. Look out for our review of 2019 from some of our ace scribes as we look at the highs and lows of the past 12 months.

We continue with our look back through piping history. We know readers appreciate these ‘blasts from the past’ and thank you to all those who have forwarded old photographs and newspaper clippings. Please keep them coming. The following is from the Press & Journal newspaper, Aberdeen, September 30, 1967. The report reads: Mr William MacDonald, a native of Benbecula, carried off the piping world’s major trophy at the Northern Meeting…