Category: Features

Love Piping? Live Piping and Piping Live! Coming Your Way This Summer

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Don’t despair folks. Despite the expected cancellation, yet again, of Oban and Inverness, piping enthusaists here in Scotland still have a good chance of catching some great live music this summer, writes the Editor. Director Finlay MacDonald has re-affirmed that the Piping Live! festival will be going ahead from August 7 -15 and there will an expected announcement tomorrow. The Silver Chanter contest will run, with, it is hoped, a…

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Fints are Instrumental in Formation of All Ireland Championships Created in 1946

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We continue with part three of our history of the famous Fintan Lalor Pipe Band from the south of Ireland. Few of the bands from Northern Ireland, outside of the small number that competed in the Oireachtas or Feis events in Southern Ireland, would have ever have seen or heard the Fintan Lalor in action. However they most certainly would have heard them on the radio as they had broadcast…

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My Days Learning from the Greatest Piper in the World – Iain Murdo Morrison

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The passing of P/M Iain Murdo Morrison six months ago still resonates among those who knew him. Here reader Alasdair MacIver looks back on his time with the master piper. Alasdair is pictured above right with Iain Morrison junior playing at a house ceilidh in December 1990 as their proud tutor looks on. It has taken me some time to be able to write this. Iain Murdo Morrison was my…

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Letters: Bruce Gandy on Oban and Inverness/ Duncan Watson on March Playing

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Correspondence to Piping Press is always welcome. Recent letters are carried below. Subjects are this week’s article on the prospect of an Argyllshire Gathering and Northern Meeting being held this year and Donald Shaw Ramsay’s comments on pipe marches. Firstly Bruce Gandy, Nova Scotia, one of the world’s leading pipers, on the uncertainty surrounding Oban and Inverness. Bruce writes: ‘Good article; hopefully this will push the promoters a wee bit…

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A Pipe Band is Judged By Its Poorest Players – P/M Donald Shaw Ramsay BEM

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The second part of the article from a 1960s issue of the Piping, Drumming and Dancing Journal by P/M Donald Shaw Ramsay, a brilliant player, pipe major and composer. Here he considers march tempi, and then offers an introduction to ceòl mòr or piobaireachd. Read the first excerpt here. How fast should a piper play?  This again is a very controversial point, but try playing a march at a speed of…

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