Category: Pipe Bands

A Look Back at 2015 with Editor Robert Wallace

Posted on      by     

Yesterday we received the annual facts and figures from our web host and they made pleasant and satisfying reading. 400,000 visits from 156 countries in 12 months cannot be bad, and I would like to thank all of our readers and advertisers for their support. It is clear that you approve of a web magazine that educates, informs, criticises and entertains – and always with the highest journalistic standards. I know…

More A Look Back at 2015 with Editor Robert Wallace

PP Editor’s Blog: Wm Sinclair/ Northern Meeting 1990/ US Scholarship/ Letter

Posted on      by     

Mentioning Duncan Campbell as one of the old school of Scottish bagpipe makers  reminded me of a visit to Edinburgh a few weeks ago when I was able to call in to the Wm Sinclair workshop in Leith. In all my piping years I’d never been before and it was a pleasure to meet Alastair Sinclair, the present proprietor, a master craftsmen who is carrying on the fine tradition of…

More PP Editor’s Blog: Wm Sinclair/ Northern Meeting 1990/ US Scholarship/ Letter

78th Fraser Highlanders Concert Remembered

Posted on      by     

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…

More 78th Fraser Highlanders Concert Remembered

PP Editor’s Blog: Canntaireachd Explanation/ RACPADS Donation etc

Posted on      by     

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…

More PP Editor’s Blog: Canntaireachd Explanation/ RACPADS Donation etc

PP Ed’s Blog: Tuition Funding/ Vale Recruiting/ Govan Pipers/ SFU/ FMM Tickets

Posted on      by     

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…

More PP Ed’s Blog: Tuition Funding/ Vale Recruiting/ Govan Pipers/ SFU/ FMM Tickets