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….

By The Editor We’re a few days out from the next pipe band major, the UKs at Lurgan, Northern Ireland. Prior to the British at Paisley there was considerable huffing and pufffing over the various streaming services that position themselves around the Grade 1 arena. Armed with fancy tripods and some pretty hi-tech equipment (as far as I can judge) they do a good job of bringing the music and…

By Robert Wallace The dust may have settled following the shock Grade 2 result at the British Pipe Band Championship but the problem has not gone away. You will remember the summary sheets last month showed wide discrepancies in the opinions of the piping adjudicators. Some were as much as ten placings and more apart. We can dismiss the anonymous verbiage on social media decrying the RSPBA ship and all…

A rare recording of one of the great pipers and composers, GS McLennan, has been published by his family on their website. The recording, though of poor quality, is of historical interest and has the young prodigy, pictured below, playing the reel, De’il Amang the Tailors. Listen to it here. I read on the website that there are other recordings of GS in the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh….