Shotts at the 2019 British. Will there be a return in May 2021? Who would disagree with yesterday’s comments by Gilbert Cromie that we need some forward planning if we are to save the 2021 pipe band season? I would go further and ask that the RSPBA form a ‘Task Force 21’ to examine all of the potentail problems, to offer solutions and to do so from a positive, ‘can…

Listening to BBC Alba’s ‘Crunluath’ programme on Saturday you realised what you had been missing by way of live music. Host Catriona MacNeill played excerpts from the 2019 Northern Meeting, and like her predecessor Cailean Maclean, let the music do the talking. Two full piobaireachd, three six-tune MSRs and a hornpipe & jig made for an hour or so of absorbing piping with terrific performances from Jack Lee (pictured), Bruce…

We are grateful to reader Patrick Larkin for forwarding the above picture. Patrick writes: ‘With regard to the recent post of P/M Joe Wilson, Calum Campbell, James Robertson and Farewell to the Creeks, you will be interested to see the above picture of the Drums and Pipes of the Gordon Highlanders taken in Celle, West Germany, in 1960. ‘The pipe major on the right of the picture is Calum Campbell. To…

By Robert Wallace A new edition of Seumas MacNeill’s seminal work ‘Piobaireachd – Classical Music of the Highland Bagpipe’ has been published by the Piobaireachd Society. The book first appeared in 1968 to accompany a radio series presented by Seumas, original publisher and copyright holder, the BBC. Out of print, permission to re-issue has been granted to the Society. Seumas was, for 30 years plus, its Hon. Secretary. In summing…

Folklorist Stuart Eydmann has forwarded this picture from a Russian publicaion of an British Army pipes & drums in Salonika, Greece, in 1905. The Schotlandskyie (Scotsmen) must have been there as part of some Balkan action which pre-dates the Salonika Campaign of WW1. All information gratefully received. I try to keep tabs on what is happening in the world of music with the view to informing pipers and pipe bands…