Category: Pipe Bands

PP Editor’s Blog: Sandy Hain/ Donella Beaton/ SPA/ South Florida etc.

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It was a pleasure to talk to Sandy Hain the other day. Sandy is the composer of the popular jig Donald MacKillop, now better known, erroneously, as Duncan MacKillop. The eponymous Donald was from Wick and a piper in the Black Watch through WW2. Sandy was  Pipe Major at the regimental depot in Perth. Sandy ‘did the course’ with Willie Ross 1950 -51 along with Bob Crabb (Scots Guards), Peter…

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Wheel of Fortune Announces Line-Up of Top Pipers

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Lothian and Borders branch band, The City of Edinburgh, has announced the line-up for the 2016 Pipe Majors’ Wheel of Fortune competition. The band has sent this: ‘Brian Lamond, a former Pipe Major of Dysart and Dundonald and a member of the Victoria Police Pipe Band which won the World’s in 1998, will return to defend the title he won in 2015.  From Dunfermline in Fife, Brian will be joined by…

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A Look Back at 2015 with Editor Robert Wallace

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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…

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

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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…

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78th Fraser Highlanders Concert Remembered

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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…

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