Category: Reviews

Thirty-two Long Months and the Pandemic Nighmare is Finally Put Behind Us (Updated with Full Results )

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It fell to the Kilbarchan pipe band to sound the first note played in anger on a pipe band contest field for almost three years. With that first introductory E this band of 17 pipers swept away months of moribundity and declared ‘the pipe band movement is back’! The occasion was the Gourock Highland Games contest held at the weekend at Battery Park, Greenock. I arrived early just as tents…

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History: Northern Meeting 1970, Success for Andrew Wright and Ian McLellan

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Last week we ran the results from Inverness 1970. Since then our staff have been busy burrowing and have come up with an original report and pictures from the contest published in the Press & Journal newspaper dated September 18. Headlined ‘A Double Gold Success for Piper’ the article reads: ‘A Paisley engineer has scored a double success in the piping world this year. ‘Last month 33-year-old Andrew Wright won…

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‘Amazing Grace’, Tape on Chanters, Donald MacPherson and Donald MacLeod

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A student wrote to me last week following the story on Piping Press marking the 50th anniversary of the release of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards’ Amazing Grace. His point was simply that on first hearing the tune, the F, to his ear, sounded slightly flat. His observation was not intended in any way to be a criticism of the piper playing the solo, P/M Tony Crease. He agreed that…

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History: 50 years to the Month Since ‘Amazing Grace’ Took the World by Storm

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The above cutting is from the Scottish Daily Express newspaper and readers will see it is dated April 11, 1972. Younger generations will be unaware of the seismic effect the success of this recording had on the public’s perception of the bagpipe and its music. It still resonates today, half a century later. The report reads: ‘The march of the Royal Scots Dragoon to No. 1 in the Top Twenty…

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Half a Century on, this Seminal Work on Piobaireachd Continues to Educate and Entertain

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By The Editor Fifty-five years ago Seumas MacNeill, then Joint Principal of the College of Piping, began work on a book which was to open a thousand eyes and ears to ceòl mòr. ‘Piobaireachd – Classical Pipe Music of the Great Highland Bagpipe’ was a BBC-commissioned publication. Below is an advert it ran in an October 1968 edition of Radio Times, it listings magazine. It reads: ‘Piobaireachd , the classical…

More Half a Century on, this Seminal Work on Piobaireachd Continues to Educate and Entertain