Northern Ireland’s Pipe Bands Return to Action

Toward the end of May 2021 the NI Executive announced that bands could undertake static outdoor practices (although no singing was allowed) and this was embraced enthusiastically by the majority of the country’s seven hundred bands. Week by week individual bands or band forums were showing photographs of bands at practice in all sorts of environments from car parks to farm yards in order to stick to the rules. Pipe…

Lorient Festival Going Ahead this Weekend/ Piping Among the Bretons – A History, Part 3

The world’s biggest festival of Celtice music is about to get underway in Brittany, France, but in a much-diminished format. Scottish Organiser Tom Johnstone told Piping Press: ‘It is on but very much reduced. ‘For Scotland we have no pipers or pipe bands also no dancers. We had two folk bands at first and it was cut down to one but they have pulled out due to the self isolation…

OBAN PIPE BAND – NEW PIPE MAJOR

Oban Pipe Band is delighted to announce that Andy Matthews has been elected as pipe major, with Niall Jordan as his pipe sergeant, writes Band President Iain Hurst. Andy and Niall will succeed Daniel Johnstone and James Rosie, who have led the band since 2018. The band committee wish to thank Daniel and James for their contributions to the band and the successful last season of competition in 2019. It…

Piping Among the Bretons – A History, Part 2

We continue with this article taken from a 1968 edition of the US-based magazine ‘Piping World’. Read the first part here… The post-war piping boom in Brittany, however, is almost beyond belief, and a leading part in the revival of active interest has been played by the same Highland bagpipe which some thought might ‘wipe out’ Breton piping in the region. The greatest advances have become apparent in the development…

John McLellan, Dunoon, Anniversary/ New John Dew Recording

Thanks for covering my Tribute website to P/M John McLellan DCM previously, writes Duncan MacGregor.As we are fast approaching two important dates on P/M McLellan’s calendar I thought I should let you know. July 31 [today] marks the 72nd year of Jock’s passing, and August 8, 2021, will be the anniversary of Jock’s birth in 1875. This picture of John McLellan DCM from the Anglo Boer War was only discovered…