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…

By the Editor Over last weekend I judged the Balmoral Classic junior amateur championship contest held annually in the US. This year it was a virtual event and thanks to excellent organisation it worked very well. My fellow judges, Jim MacGillivray (Canada) and Scott Walker (US), were sent video recordings of the pipers’ piobaireachd and MSR entries towards the end of the week. We came together on Saturday to make…

Good news this week on the Covid-19 vaccine. The British Government had wisely ordered millions of doses in advance and Scotland will, rightly, gets its proportionate share. Other scientists working on other vaccines will report soon on their efficacy, hopefully positive. Whether it will all be in time to save the 2021 pipe band season remains to be seen. It will take months to roll the jabs out to the…