Reader Michael Hubbard in the US: I thought to send this fairly dramatic photo from October 2021. This is the Clan Macleay Pipe Band, Portland, Oregon, USA (in continuous existence since 1912). We are playing at the launching of a barge at Greenbrier Marine. As can be seen, we were in our typically rainy period, with pipers and drummers in Inverness capes. The Drum Major, Dan Kelley, decided to stand out…
We continue our excerpts from the archive of the renowned Gold Medallist and composer……… Wednesday evening, August 30, 1972, Upper Duntuilm, Isle of Skye….Dear Donald Morrison, I have just been listening to the wireless recording of the ‘Silver Chanter’ and it has confirmed my feeling that your ‘Iain Garve’ [John Garve MacLeod of Raasay’s Lament] was the best tune of the evening. I think John MacDonald [Inverness] would have agreed…
An Editor’s Notebook item last week featured results from around the Highland games in the US in 1968. One of the prizewinners mentioned was former professional piper and now senior adjudicator Al McMullin. He writes…. There are always interesting ‘stories’ that are not reflected in results. I offer the following about the ’17 and Under Piobaireachd’ noted in the 1968 results at Fair Hill, Maryland. The late, great, John MacFadyen…
This reader contacted us after we published the article from Scotland’s History magazine ‘The Meaning of Bagpipe Music on the Western Front During WW1‘ My name is Robyn M Pio. I am a 70-year-old American woman raised by a German great-grandmother (who was born in Bremen, 1878). I now live in Chicago, Illinois, but my first language was German. I became a Catholic Francophile whilst living in France years ago. I am…
We are well into the 2021 Northern Winter School here on the plains of Lower Saxony and as I write the music mingles with forests and fields that have borne witness to the best and worst of human conduct. In this little corner of Lohheide over 50 piping and drumming students banish the pandemic memories, learn their rudiments and re-kindle old friendships. The format is, as ever, hard work in…
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