Fingers crossed, the vaccine, being administered here in the UK from Monday, will have arrived in time to save the summer piping season. The Oxford shots are not far behind adding to the millions of doses flooding in. However it will take a few months until they reach a level of application that satisfies the politicians that they can give up their grandstanding and release us all from house arrest….

The only show in town this weekend is the Piobaireachd Society’s livestreamed recital from the National Piping Centre. From 7.30pm on Sunday (29th) I’ll be introducing Angus MacColl, Cameron Macdougall, Iain Speirs and Sandy Cameron in a two-hour long concert of ceòl mòr. Tickets are £5 and are available here. Take a look at part of the brochure below. The Society has hired a very professional Edinburgh-based company, Bridge IV…

By Robert Wallace There have been few upsides to the current pandemic but one has been the time it has afforded us to sort through ‘stuff’. Old photographs, cuttings choke the PP library. A solid sift last weekend yielded a note and snaps I received from the late Aladair Gillies in 1997 when he was installed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. I had done an extensive interview with…

I hope children who currently have to learn their piping using eletronic chanters won’t have to do so for too much longer. They have to press the fingers much too hard on the ‘holes’ and as we all know the lighter the grip the better. Learning pipes this way will be like learning piano on an electric keyboard; the sensitivity is all wrong. John MacDougall Gillies advocated treating the chanter…

November 14-15, 2020: The 14th Annual Balmoral Classic, featuring the US Junior Solo Piping & Drumming Championships, began on Saturday morning with piobaireachd contests streaming via YouTube starting at 8:30am EST.  This was the first Balmoral Classic that was online, remote and virtual. Scheduling and logistics were intensive and very competently organized and executed by Sean Patrick Regan, Co-ordinator of Online Programs; Leslie Clark, Balmoral’s Associate Director; Elaine Lee, Marketing…