By the Editor To the capital of the Highlands for the European Pipe Band Championships, the third ‘major’ of the season. The Friday was a blistering, boiling day. We pulled off the A9 for refreshment. Into the Carrbridge Hotel to find, serendipitously, adjudicator Robert Mathieson and, eventually, his colleagues Bob Worrall and John Wilson.  They were all looking forward to the Championship, talking excitedly about the prospect of hearing some…

A hearty well done to Boghall and Bathgate for supporting the Princes Street Gardens contest last weekend but why on earth did they form up in a circle in front of the Ross Bandstand? With part of the band’s backs to the terraced audience it looked, from photographs I’ve seen, so last century. Goodness knows what the visitors must have thought. Would a brass band have shaped up that way?…

The Argyllshire Gathering have asked us to remind everyone that entries for the MacGregor Memorial Competition close at the end of the month. The contest is run by the Gathering on behalf of the Highland Society of London and is a leading event for aspiring young professionals. The winner is usually guaranteed a place in the following year’s Silver Medal at Oban. Entries here. Piping Convenor Torquil Telfer tells me…

By Robert Wallace Late one morning earlier this week I attended a concert ‘Our Oldest Tradition’ given by John Dew of Inveraray Pipe Band and one of our foremost young players. The concert was to mark the end of his BMus Trad – Piping degree third year at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  The performance was given in the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. Such is the…

The terrorist atrocity in Sri Lanka a couple of months back postponed the scheduled meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). This meant that the planned dispensation for bagpipes and other African blackwood instruments will have to wait a few months more. It had been proposed that the meeting would agree a proposal that finished instruments would henceforth be considered exempt from costly licences and paperwork….