Further Details on the 2025 Silver Chanter

Craig Sutherland, now living in western Canada, is unable to travel to the 2025 Silver Chanter competition/ recital. Craig qualified by winning the Gold Medal at Inverness last year. His place will be taken by Angus MacPhee, runner-up in the Dunvegan Medal 2024. Other invitees are Nick Hudson, Texas, (Inverness Clasp), Alasdair Henderson, Dunoon, (Snr. Piob. Oban), Derek Midgley, New Jersey, (Dunvegan Clasp), Sandy Cameron, Roy Bridge, (Dunvegan Medal), and Cameron Drummond, Edinburgh,…

Piobaireachd Study on Skye

The Piobaireachd Society Summer School ended last weekend. It was the fourth time we had travelled to Skye for the week-long class. We had 25 students. They came from the Phillipines, Thailand, USA, Canada, Liverpool, the isles of Bute and Mull, the Borders, Bellshill, Norwich, Glasgow, London, Aberdeen, Caithness, Austria, Germany and Brittany. They all appreciated the accommodation and food at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College on the Sleat…

Know Your Judges: Bob Worrall

Twenty five years ago Pipe Band Magazine began a series of interviews with pipe band judges. The first, in January 2000, was with Canadian Bob Worrall. The introduction to the series began like this…‘Love them or loathe them, judges are a vital part of our pipe band world…..we’ll be asking the men and women with the clipboards to reveal something about what they really know and feel about our music…..what…

Editor’s Notebook: UK Championships/ Piping Live/ SPA AGM/ Scots Guards KO/ Northern Winter School

There are only three bands competing in Grade 1 at the UK Championships to be held at Ingliston near Edinburgh on July 12. They are Johnstone (pictured), Boghall and SLOT. No one should take any pleasure at this state of affairs. Next year the UKs need to be outwith the holiday period and definitely not on July 12. The first six bands in Grade 2 have been asked to carry…

Scotland’s Memorial Cairns for Famous Pipers

I took a trip up Glen Strathfarrar a week ago to see the P/M Willie Ross cairn. It’s been in situ for about 15 years following the campaign by the late Finlay MacRae for a monument to his old tutor born in the glen at Camsorie. By The Editor A visit to the cairn should be on every piper’s bucket list. To get there take the A831 from near Beauly…