Category: Blog

Editor’s Notebook: Pipe Band Season/ Cameron Kirk/ Kids Pipes/ James’s Album/ Northern Meeting 1971

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I am told that the form the 2022 pipe band season will take will be decided at a Board of Directors meeting prior to the online RSPBA AGM on March 12. The fact that the AGM itself is online is a worry, although I can see the benefits of the wider reach it gives the Association. A frisson of fear runs through the spine when, on checking the RSPBA calendar,…

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New Contest to Honour the Memory of James Campbell, Kilberry

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James Campbell had at least two discrete sets of ardent followers. To some, he was a doyen of the piobaireachd world, the son of Archibald Campbell of The Kilberry Book of Ceòl Mòr (who knew all of the tunes in that book off by heart) and a once regular judge of competition. To others he was a superb academic lawyer and much-loved Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where hetaught Roman…

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WW2 Piping: John Wilson ‘Not Dead’ and the Reel of the 51st Highland Division

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In January 1940 John Wilson went over to France with his regiment. He was taken prisoner at St Valery in June 1940 and lost his pipe case and all the contents. He spent the rest of the war in prisoner of war camps.  His ‘death’ was reported in the pages of Piping and Dancing magazine but in the issue of the following month it was reported that he was not…

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How Lanarkshire Bands Led the Way in the Development of the ‘Long’ 2/4 Competition March

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Yesterday’s story on the eight-part Maggie Cameron brought to mind an article I wrote 20 years ago about the development of Marches, Strathspeys and Reels from four to six and eight part mega pieces, writes the Editor. It was all to do with giving the pipe band more of a stretch. The top outfits were sick of puny wee Rejected Suitor and four-part Loch Loskin to say nothing of Charles…

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The Blind Piper’s Eight Part Version of the Classic Strathspey Maggie Cameron

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I came across this while cleaning out some old piping manuscripts, writes Peter Aumonier. It is parts 5-8 of Maggie Cameron. As readers can see, the parts come from the pen of Archie MacNeill, the blind piper. It was given to me years ago by Jock Low at the Vancouver Island Piper’s Club, Victoria, British Columbia. By Peter Aumonier and Jack Lee Jock Low did the P/M course during WW2…

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