FAMOUS PIPERS – DUNCAN JOHNSTONE, THE PIPER’S PIPER, FINAL Excerpt

Over the last few weeks we have been running the interview our Editor Robert Wallace conducted with Duncan Johnstone, master player, teacher and composer, in 1996. This is the final instalment of that interview …… When did you start teaching? I didn’t start teaching until the 1970s. I opened the school in Robertson Street in 1976 and when it closed in 1979 I started teaching in the house. I must…

PP Ed’s Blog: Highland & Islands/ La Sturgeon/ Inveraray at Ballymena/ NPC-CoP/ Braemar Pix

Riona MacInnes of the Highland & Islands Festival has asked us to remind everyone that entries close for this year’s event this  Monday, March 19. There are senior piping contests in ceol beag and ceol mor for all grades A/P, B &C. For the juniors there is everything from Junior Chanter Under 12 to a full range of events for the under 18s. For drummers, tenor and side, there are…

New Recordings of Ronald Lawrie and Jimmy Young/ Benbecula Young Piper of the Year

Thanks to Piobaireachd Society President Dr Jack Taylor for forwarding new archive recordings to Piping Press. They are from the Society’s Robert Reid audio archive and feature P/M Ronald Lawrie and Jimmy Young playing at the 1956 ‘Echoes of Oban’ concert held at the College of Piping. P/M Lawrie, Gold Medallist and Pipe Major of the City of Glasgow Police Pipe Band, plays his own tune Glenfinnan Highland Gathering –…

Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championship – Full Report

From our Juvenile Grade correspondent…….With almost 100 band performances across eight competition segments, it was a full pattern and a very positive sight to behold. Band members hustling and bustling along corridors from their respective warm up rooms to final tuning and three performance spaces. A wide spread of Grade 1 superstars coaching their charges and, in amongst those last minute alterations, tuning, coaching and the general buzz, many readers…

Results from the Scottish Schools Pipe Band Championships (Updated)

In a bustling school in Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland, almost 100 performances over eight categories. With silverware up for grabs and almost £10,000 in prize money from the Scottish Schools Piping & Drumming Trust, this is a meaningful pool for competitors travelling from all over Scotland, and one band from south of the border. The First Minister of Scotland presented the trophies. Piping Quartet 1st Lochgilphead Joint Campus 2nd Johnstone…