Fingers crossed, the vaccine, being administered here in the UK from Monday, will have arrived in time to save the summer piping season. The Oxford shots are not far behind adding to the millions of doses flooding in. However it will take a few months until they reach a level of application that satisfies the politicians that they can give up their grandstanding and release us all from house arrest….

In these testing times a little bit of normal is all any of us want. Recently, in Dunedin, Florida, that’s just what happened. The Dunedin Celtic Music & Craft Beer Festival was held on November 21st at the city’s Highlander Park. Presented by the Dunedin Scottish Arts Foundation, this is an annual event centred around traditional and contemporary celtic music and both local and national craft beer and wine makers…

Last Sunday evening the Piobaireachd Society held a concert of ceòl mòr. It was broadcast live from the National Piping Centre in Glasgow and attracted a worldwide audience. The recital featured four pipers, Sandy Cameron, Angus MacColl, Cameron Macdougall and Iain Speirs playing eight tunes, MacDougall’s Gathering, Struan Robertson’s Salute, the Unjust Incarceration, Corryvreckan Lullaby, MacKenzie of Applecross’s Salute, Lament for Donald of Laggan, End of the High Bridge and…

As I mentioned in my piece on the first two-day Worlds at Nottingham, I had also found among old papers the attached copies of bnads and tune lists for a local competition at New Meadowbank in Edinburgh in 1948 and the World Championships at Stirling in 1974.  I have no knowledge of the winner at New Meadowbank but Stirling was won by Shotts & Dykehead Caledonia under Tom McAllister. Here…

Composer, teacher and Gold Medallist Niall Matheson has written a new piobaireachd for a war hero from his home Highland village of Newtonmore in Badenoch. Colonel Sir Thomas ‘Tommy’ Macpherson died in 2014 aged 94. At the time of his passing he was believed to be the most decorated surviving veteran of the Second World War. He won three Military Crosses and France’s Légion d’Honneur among many other awards. Said…