PP Ed's Blog: Alasdair at the Games/ MacDonald Mem./ Indian Lady Piper/ Masters of Piobaireachd/ Corby Change

Our Guide to the Games is proving very popular even after only one day. It gives me the opportunity of running the picture above from the collection of reader Duncan Watson. It is of a young Alasdair Gillies playing at Cawdor Castle games in the 1980s. Alasdair was a supporter of the games even after he achieved what you might call piping’s equivalent of superstar status. Too many of our…

PP Ed's Blog: Band Numbers Poll Result/ Piob Soc Recital/ Ulster Petition to BBC

I think it is a bit far-fetched for yesterday’s Sunday Mail newspaper to say there is a boycott of the Worlds over band sizes. Quite the opposite with record numbers signing up every year.  Still, good that they picked up on the Wall Street Journal story and gave the issue some publicity as best they could. Shouldn’t expect the SM to get everything right and I had a laugh at the…

Stuart Finlayson Interview Part 2 – Donald and Duncan were My Dream Ticket

Stuart Finlayson is the renowned piper, composer and adjudicator from New Zealand. A prizewinner at the highest level, Stuart is well known to all generations via his outstanding compositions – tunes such as Stuart Chisholm’s Walkabout and the Motley Crew. As a teenager he left his homeland and took the long boat trip to Scotland where he studied piping with P/M Donald MacLeod and Duncan Johnstone. In this second part…

Irish Piobaireachd Society Annual Competition Results

Con Houlihan reports: Please find attached the results from this year’s Irish Piobaireachd Society annual competition, which was held in the shadow of the Kilworth Hills, Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. The event was kindly sponsored by RG Hardie & Co. The judges  were John Reville and Dr Jack Taylor.  Beginners 1st Tigerlily Keoghan 2nd Liam Casey 3rd Jane Carmody 4th Eamonn Casey Under 18 1st Tigerlily Keoghan Open Amateur Piobaireachd 1st…

PP Ed's Blog: Skye Under Fire/ Geoff's Collection/ SPA/ Ulster Charity Concert

US broadcaster CNN has handed the island of Skye the unwelcome tag of one of the top 12 global tourists destinations to avoid this summer. The list also includes Barcelona, the Taj Mahal and Mount Everest. The report states that the infrastructure of Scotland’s largest island ‘creaked under the pressure last year as thousands of tourists in coaches and cars plied its narrow lanes resulting in widespread snarl-ups. Eventually the residents…