Category: Solo Piping

Oban and Inverness Open for Business as First 2023 Games Schedule Published

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Now is the time to get the diaries out and start planning for summer 2023. Inverness and Oban are now open for registration/ entry. It is a requirement that those pipers intending to compete at the major gatherings register as final eligibility will be decided at a joint meeting of the promoters and other bodies next month. Here is the link for the Argyllshire Gathering. Here is the link for…

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John MacFadyen on the Art of Judging – Part 4

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Here we have the penultimate excerpt of John MacFadyen’s comments on judging from the recording made in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1973. In it he discourses on tune selection. He tells an amusing story of the Dunvegan Medal and Sheriff Grant and the confusion between MacFarlane’s Gathering and Too Long in this Condition. He says it is wrong for judges to give favourite tunes to their favourite pipers. He describes…

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Piobaireachd Society Conference Returns After a Three Year Absence

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The Piobaireachd Society has announced that their Annual Conference, until recently an important fixture in the piping calendar, will return in March next year for the first time since 2019. The Conference provides a forum for interesting and important studies on ceòl mòr. Planned topics are: The venue is the Royal George Hotel, Perth, over the weekend of March 24 – 26, 2023. The Society will subsidise the conference –…

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Readers Respond to Competition 2/4 March Report: Judges Don’t Select New Music

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A selection of the responses to yesterday’s article by Dale Brown on the paucity of modern 2/4 march compositions on the competition boards…. Vincent Janowski: There might be a touch of light coming into your cave, but, again, your post and this list of great tunes ignores the obvious: at one point, most of these tunes were considered ‘modern’. Without today’s easy access to printed books and scores, it must…

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Statistics Prove the Lack of Modern 2/4 Marches in Today’s Competition Repertoire

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In February this year I wrote the opinion piece on Piping Press about 2/4 march competitions had become stagnant in the music being played – same ol’ same ol’.  We lit a fuse under some people.  It was Vincent who thought I had been living in a cave for the past 30 years. (He was from New Jersey, that explains his attitude!)  Others took offence saying that there was an…

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