Category: History

Piper Eilidh’s Trust Helps Youth Music Groups Bounce Back from Pandemic

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Youth music groups across Scotland grappling with the continued effects of the pandemic have been awarded funding to support their safe return to teaching by the charity set up in memory of Manchester Arena victim, piper Eilidh MacLeod. The bodies benefiting include the Lewis and Harris Piping Society, Mallaig and Ardnamurchan Pipe Band and Castlebay School Pipe Band. The money is for local youth music initiatives to safely return to…

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Piping During WW2: Home and Abroad the Music Continued Regardless

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The current hiatus in piping activity, more particularly in pipe band activity, has been likened to a similar fallow period during WW2. What was it like then? In this series piping historian Jeannie Campbell investigates and finds that there was much more going on than might be imagined…. Pipers took their traditions with them wherever they were stationed. A Highland Games was held on the North African shores of the…

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Strathclyde Police Pipe Band, a Ship Launch on the Clyde and P/M Donald MacKay

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Following on from last week’s item on bands in shipyards, I enclose photos of the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band led by P/M Donald MacKay at Yarrow’s shipyard on the Clyde in November 2007 for the official launch of Royal Navy vessel HMS Diamond, writes Allan Hamilton. It was a cold wet day as usual, but undaunted the band played without capes to the delight of a crowd of Navy personnel,…

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Editor’s Notebook: Covid Fears for 2022 Season/ Charity Single/ Talk Piobaireachd/ Results from Yesteryear

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All the indications are that the restrictions/ recommendations on social gatherings limited to three households, as announced yesterday, will extend at least until March. What impact this will have on band practices here in Scotland I know not. But I am concerned. The knock on effect for the 2022 season could be significant. Already we have had the cancellation of the Scottish Schools contest scheduled for the end of March….

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Some Reflections on My Time as an Instructor at the College of Piping

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The airing last weekend of the online premiere of the film ‘Follow Me…I’m Right Behind You’ brought back a host of memories from my time as senior instructor at the former College of Piping in Glasgow. I retired from Strathclyde Police in December 2006 and during that first week of doing nothing I received a phone call; it was the College of Piping asking if I would come in and…

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