With European time cracking along, our piping and drumming friends and colleagues drawn to North America for the Midwest Highland Arts Fund ‘Winter Storm’ weekend are underway in the competition segment of the event. The above picture shows winners from last year’s contest: Alastair Lee, Jamie Troy, both British Columbia, Canada, Alex Gandy from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Andrew Carlisle from Northern Ireland now Pittsburgh, USA, and Andrew Lee, British Columbia….

The two most important light music competitions in world piping are the Former Winners’ events at Oban and Inverness. To qualify for either pipers must have won an ‘A’ grade March or Strathspey & Reel at Oban or the ‘A’ MSR at Inverness. Today our Special Correspondent recalls the evening he spent at this year’s Northern Meeting listening to the ‘big’ MSR. The montage above shows the winner Alex Gandy,…

By Our Special Correspondent As Field Marshal players erupted, ran around, jigged, jumped hugged and entertained all of us with their antics in the seconds after Ian Embelton had pronounced them World Champions, one of their number, Piper Matt Wilson, naturally, joined in. His P/M Richard Parkes had just equalled the record with 12 Worlds wins after all. But very few will have realised that Matt himself had his own record…