Category: Features

News: Atholl Gathering Entries Closed/ Pipe Idol/ Band Sponsor/ Aboyne Tickets/ Fèisean Cash

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Angus Clarke of the Atholl Gathering has asked us to point out that that entries for the C Grade Piobaireachd at this year’s Gathering on May 28 are closed. Later he confirmed all other senior contests were now closed with 62 pipers entered. Angus says there is still room for entries in the Juniors. The Atholl Gathering, held on the land adjacent to Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Perthshire, is considered the…

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Editor’s Notebook: RSPBA Board of Directors/ Ontario View/ Aberdeen PS/ Duthart Tune/ Black Watch Tunes

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The RSPBA’s Board of Directors met on April 15 and the minutes of the meeting were published yesterday. Out takes from the meeting are as follows: Consideration is being given to the restoration of the popular Twitter results feed at the Worlds. This was particularly useful in letting bands know the outcome of the qualifiers. Posts were made after official announcements, but they meant that band members had an instant…

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The KOSBs, Willie Bryson and a Mysterious Name Change of One of His Tunes

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I am fortunate to have in my possession an army piper’s manuscript book. It is dated August 1941 and it belonged to Corporal W.E. Grieve, 6th Battalion of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. It contains many competition tunes well beyond regimental basic requirements. As I was searching for tunes relating to WW2, one four-parted 6/8 march, Crossing the Odon, by the well-known Willie Bryson (pictured), caught my eye immediately. The River…

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Black Watch Regimental Museum in Perth is of Considerable Interest to All Pipers

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Many years ago I did an article for the Piping Times detailing the must-see piping monuments and venues dotted around Scotland. They included the Angus MacKay Cairn on the Nith, the College of Piping, the Bobs of Balmoral Cairn on Deeside and Calum Piobair’s monument in Badenoch. To that list you may now like to add the Black Watch Museum, Perth. Among the many hundreds of items on display are…

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Editor’s Notebook: New BBC Piping Show/ Charles Dunbar/ Captain John Dinner/ Electronic Pipes for Sale/ Moray Boost

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I must say I was impressed with the crisp, no-nonsense delivery of the BBC’s new piping presenter Micheal Steele – maybe not so much with the show. Micheal, from his Gaelic pronunciation, is clearly a speaker of the old tongue and that bilingualism will work well when he re-works things for the Gaelic medium ‘Crunluath’ programme. The new show, entitled ‘Piping Sounds’, is more or less what the critics predicted…

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