Category: Reviews

The Missing Majors, Band Sizes, and the Need for an Earlier AGM

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Pressure is growing on the RSPBA for an announcement regarding the 2024 ‘missing majors’. The statement published yesterday on PP about the easement of band numbers referenced the major championships and this has given rise to some optimism that there may well be progress afoot. However nothing has been confirmed and we remain in limbo with only two championships, the Scottish at Dumbarton on July 27, and the Worlds at…

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Remembering the Paisley Band, their Drum Corps and the Great Days in the 1970s

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There have been several features in Piping Press featuring a photo of Seagrams’ Pipe Band under the late Pipe Major Donnie Thompson, particularly when it had its annus mirabilis in Grade 2 in 1992 as World Champions and Champion of Champions, writes Iain White.  I first knew this band in the early 1970s when it was the Paisley Pipe Band, having previously been Paisley British Legion. The Paisley band was…

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New Announcements from the Piobaireachd Society

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Texan Piper Mike Cusack has accepted an invitation to join the Piobaireachd Society’s prestigious Music Committee. Mike, pictured above, is a double Gold Medallist and winner of all the major piobaireachd prizes some many times over. He recently retired as Head Master of St Thomas’s Episcopal School in Houston and still plays with the school alumni pipe band. He is the second North American to join the committee. Jack Lee,…

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Con Ó Conaill – A Tireless Servant to Pipe Bands in Ireland and Worldwide

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The AGM of the Irish Pipe Band Association witnessed a watershed moment when the association’s long-serving and much respected president Con Ó Conaill stepped down after 47 years in the service of the pipe band community.  Con was born and reared in Ballymurphy, Innishannon, Co Cork. As a youth, Con showed himself to be academically talented winning a scholarship to secondary school. By Brian McMahon After school he worked in…

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Editor’s Notebook: RSPBA Branch Reorganisation/ Prize Pipes/ Cailean’s Card/ NZ School/ Edinburgh Police Solos 1971

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Whilst we are focussed on the matter of the ‘missing majors’ I think it would also be sensible if the RSPBA formally rationalised their branches. It is a good while now since the demise of the Fife and Central Scotland branches with their bands being absorbed into either Lothian & Borders or Dundee, Perth & Angus. But the names no longer make sense. All the former Central Scotland Branch bands…

More Editor’s Notebook: RSPBA Branch Reorganisation/ Prize Pipes/ Cailean’s Card/ NZ School/ Edinburgh Police Solos 1971