Added to the growing PP Audio Archive today is a recording of Iain Speirs’ actual winning performance in the 2007 Northern Meeting Gold Medal competition. Iain’s tune is Lady Margaret MacDonald’s Salute and with it he completed his set of Gold Medals, having taken the Oban equivalent with the King’s Taxes in 2002. Since then Iain has become one of our most sensitive and cultured interpreters of ceol mor, winning…
Most readers will be aware of the winners of the World Pipe Band Championship over the years. Indeed many of you will be able to reel off the names of those bands who’ve made it to the number one position and maybe even the year(s) in which they did it. However how many can remember all the great bands who ‘only’ got second? Not a lot we think. Yet the…
To the Uist & Barra contest tomorrow for the annual professional competition. I hear that the tuning times have been restricted to four minutes in the piobaireachd, three in the MSR and one (if needed) for the H&J. Tuning lights will be in force to ensure these times are stuck to but by my calculation we will still have to endure a collective two hours of tuning time during the…
South Florida Pipe and Drum Academy has received an official recognition from the City of Sunrise, a city close to the school’s venue in Boca Raton. City of Sunrise Mayor, Mike Ryan, who was a student at the school and who won the Most Promising Chanter Student award, has issued the following statement: ‘As Mayor of the City of Sunrise, I want to thank you for developing an Academy dedicated…
The following guide to selecting a bagpipe first appeared in Piper Press in the 1990s. It came from the renowned pipemaker Jimmy Pettigrew who for many years was the leading bagpipemaker for RG Hardie & Co……. Bagpipe making today is not as skilled as it once was. There is not enough good training these days. No one seems to do a full apprenticeship. When I started everything was done by…
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