Our main feature today is an article by Northern Ireland piper Kenny Stewart on the historic concert given by Bill Livingstone’s 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band in Ballymena, Ken’s home town, in 1987. Ken tells us of the origins of the show, how it was organised and how the band impressed so many people with their playing only a few days before they lifted the World Champion crown, the first…
Reader Thomas Mitchell asks about canntaireachd: ‘Thank you for posting the link to the Piping Press Shop for the Gesto Canntaireachd PDF book which I just downloaded. I remember watching a video years ago of interviews with pipers. One gentleman discussed the merits of pipers learning to sing canntaireachd as it was his contention that the singing could show subtleties of phrasing that are more difficult to put into standard musical notation. Have…
Two new ceol mor recordings have been added to the PP Audio Archive. They are Lament for the Children (ground and Var.2) played by John MacDonald, Inverness, and the Earl of Seaforth’s Salute played in full by Jimmy McIntosh (pictured). Check out both here. Listening figures on the archive prove how popular this free facility is on Piping Press. The statistics vary depending on how long a recording has been published….
Both Les Hutt and Barry Donaldson make some very good points about the demise of our mining communities and their contribution to piping and pipe bands and the lack of recognition thereof. It is apposite that their comments should come in the week that we saw the closure of the last deep coal mine in the UK – an industry which at its zenith, in 1913, employed a million men, men who fuelled an…
Our ‘Famous Pipers’ column today has the first part of our look back at the life and times of the late, great P/M Alasdair Gillies, renowned solo piper and last Pipe Major of the Queen’s Own Highlanders. Alasdair passed away aged only 47 in 2011. The first excerpt in the series is the obituary written for him by PP Editor Robert Wallace which appeared in the national press shortly after…
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