Category: Comment

Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championship – Full Report

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From our Juvenile Grade correspondent…….With almost 100 band performances across eight competition segments, it was a full pattern and a very positive sight to behold. Band members hustling and bustling along corridors from their respective warm up rooms to final tuning and three performance spaces. A wide spread of Grade 1 superstars coaching their charges and, in amongst those last minute alterations, tuning, coaching and the general buzz, many readers…

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RSPBA AGM Welcomes New Chairman and Rule Changes for Judges and Pipe Band College

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Eighty-four bands were represented at the RSPBA AGM held today in the Trades Hall, Glasgow (above). Beginning at 10am the meeting ran for just over two hours with healthy debate on important issues, and with representatives of the various boards and panels within the organisation presenting summaries of their annual reports. In the chair for the final time was Chairman Gordon Hamill who had previously intimated that he would be…

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PP Ed’s Blog: South Florida/ Duncan Jonstone Contest/ RSPBA AGM/ Steven’s Drum/ SSPDT Easter School

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Splendid school; splendid weather. Never more than 80 degrees, a cool breeze hovered around all week in Boca Raton. The 48 students were mostly local though some had travelled from as far as Connecticut to be there, drawn as much by our reputation for excellence in teaching as for the weather. The South Florida Pipe & Drum Academy is housed in the HQ of the Boca Fire Department and at…

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FAMOUS PIPERS – DUNCAN JOHNSTONE, THE PIPER’S PIPER, PART 3

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Saturday (March 10) sees the annual Duncan Johnstone Memorial competition held at the Piping Centre. Duncan was a master player, teacher and composer. Never a great competitor, however in this third instalment of this interview with editor Robert Wallace in 1996, he talks of the famous evening when he beat P/M Donald MacLeod in the final of the SPA Knockout in Glasgow…… Did you never have a go at Oban…

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The Piping Centre’s Triumph is Complete and the College of Piping is No More

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Dispel any notion, if you will, that yesterday’s momentous news concerning the National Piping Centre and the College of Piping is any sort of merger, some coming together of like-minded individuals who will hereafter share responsibilities, join arms in common cause, and operate as a union of equals. Be in no doubt; this is a crushing victory for the Centre. It is all over at Otago Street. The statement yesterday…

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