Today is the last opportunity to vote for your Scottish Pipe Band of the Year in the MG Alba Trad Music Awards. The contenders are: North Lanarkshire Schools Inveraray and District Preston Lodge Novice B Pipe Band Scottish Power Pipe Band Half of the PP office will be voting for North Lanarkshire and the other half for Preston Lodge (pictured). Register your preference here. Promoter ‘Hands up for Trad’ hosts…

An enjoyable evening on Saturday at the fundraiser organised by P/M Ross Cowan and his wife Claire for the Wishaw neo-natal unit in Lanarkshire. In all the evening raised over £3,000 for the unit. A very busy main auditorium at the Piping Centre (above) heard music from a quartet from Scottish Power PB, top professionals Gordon Bruce, William Geddes, Finlay Johnston and Darach Urquhart, and junior pipers from Ross’s band,…

The picture up top will let you see what a huge success last week’s Northern Winter School in Lohheide, Germany, was. It is of the closing concert. Hundreds of locals attended. Admission was free and they made substantial donations to the school. The dates for 2019 have been announced as November 8 -15. Such is its popularity that registrations for the school will open early in the new year. Hornby,…

The Scottish Schools Pipes & Drums Trust have sent this… A schools piping competition which is already the biggest in the world is set to grow further. Organisers of next year’s Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships say they expect over 150 schools from across Scotland to be represented. Event organiser Patrick Gascoigne said the predicted boost is based on the number of school pupils being taught in programmes run by…

Volume three of our footage from the 1995 Northern Meeting highlights the brilliant playing in that year’s Hornpipe & Jig contest, writes the Editor. The contest was in two parts, a qualifier and a final, the first in one of the small rooms at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, and the final in the main auditorium. The contest was won by Angus MacColl with Alan Bevan, P/M of BC’s Simon Fraser…