Willie MacDonald, Inverness, and a Piping School in Rhodesia 1974

County Durham-based piper Neil Thain has kindly forwarded this article on a piping school held in the then Rhodesia in 1974 and conducted by William MacDonald, Inverness. Mr Thain has a collection of recordings of piobaireachd he made of Willie during the school and it is hope these can be made available via the Piobaireachd Society’s archive in due course. Fifty years ago Rhodesia was a small country in Southern…

Editor’s Notebook: Season 2021/ Col. Robertson as Slow Air/ BB Piping/ AG Centenary Tunes/ Round the Games

I am trying hard to stay optimistic following RSPBA Chairman John Hughes’s statement on Piping Press last week. The realists among you will have crunched some dates. I think we can discount the first two majors at Paisley and Lurgan. That means the season will start, barring setbacks, at the Europeans at Inverness on June 26. That means that the all clear for full ‘aerosol practices’ would need to be…

Eleanor MacFadyen 1940 – 2021

The death has been announced of Mrs Eleanor MacFadyen, wife of Iain, and his constant companion throughout his long piping career. Eleanor passed away in Raigmore Hospital, Inverness, surrounded by her family. She had been ill for several months and visits to the hospital were made all the more heart rending given the isolation regulations of the pandemic. Eleanor was known throughout the solo piping world and was a regular…

Editor’s Notebook: New Year Thanks/ Heather and Drummers/ Lament for Mary MacLeod

Welcome to the first report of the New Year. I hope everyone had a good time. I think we can all look forward to a better 2021, at least in the latter half of the year. I always avoid the Hogmanay shows on television if I can and managed to do so again this year even with all the isolation strictures. Trawling through them on New Year’s Day they all…

The Bagpipe Gives us Reasons to be Cheerful as we Contemplate a New Year

For piping the year 2020 has not been all bad. The degree to which you concur will depend on the degree to which you view what we do as art or sport. If your sole driving force is to use the great Highland bagpipe to beat the you-know-what out of the next guy then the past 12 months have been a disaster. No battlefield around on which you can do…