WO2 Pipe Major Peter Macgregor reports…. Under the direction of Major Gordon Rowan, the 2018 annual Army Piping and Drumming Championship was held at the Army School of Bagpipe Music and Highland Drumming at Inchdrewer house over the weekend (October 27/28). The contest started with a graded solo piping, drumming and bugling competition on the Saturday followed by a mini band competition on the Sunday along with the prize giving…

Calling all composers. There is exactly one month left to get your composition entered for the John Cruickshank VC tune competition. First prize is £1,000. Entries close November 30. There has already been a considerable number of submissions. The contest is for a pipe march, of any time signature, to commemorate Mr Cruickshank’s heroism during WW2. It has been brought to our attention that these heroics featured in the boy’s…

There were two juvenile solo competitions in Scotland last weekend. We have already reported on the Festival of Juvenile Solo Piping. The other was the Army Cadet Forces piping competition at Redford Barracks, Edinburgh. The above picture shows Pipe Major John A. McLaren and Cadet Rory Robson of 1 Highlanders Pipes & Drums, Inverness, who took first places in the piobaireachd events. Both John and Rory are from Invergordon and play for Ross…

The World Solo Drumming coverage last weekend precluded our celebrating the memory of the late P/M Angus MacDonald who would have been 80 last Saturday. Here is an obituary from the Guardian newspaper which appeared shortly after his death in June 1999….. Few Highland bagpipers have more persuasively or widely exemplified the highest expressions of their art than Pipe Major Angus MacDonald, who has died aged 60.  Steeped in the…