MacStig Feels the Heat as he Contemplates the Entries for the PP Lockdown Writing Challenge

Here at the but an’ ben I’ve been more or less self isolating since March. Can you believe it?, four months when I should have been charging about the country in the old jalopy reporting on Grade 2. We would have been well into the season by now with a few championships under the belt and excitement building for the Worlds. Instead, all we can do my friends is think…

SFU New Video on Winning the Worlds 1995/ Piobaireachd Composing Contest Reminder

Simon Fraser University Pipe Band from British Columbia, Canada, have issued part one of a new documentary video marking their winning of the World Pipe Band Championship 25 years ago in 1995. The video is professionally done and features interviews with the then Pipe Major Terry Lee, Pipe Sergeant Jack Lee, Leading Drummer Reid Maxwell and other leading band members who played that day. It reveals how careful examination of…

Farewell to the Reedmaker – My Tribute to P/M RT Shepherd MBE

After Pipe Major Bob Shepherd MBE passed away last year I felt the need to commemorate him in some way and to pay my tribute to the man and his extraordinary accomplishments. First of all, I would like to go back in time somewhat. My first encounter with Bob Shepherd was in 1977 shortly before my 15th birthday. I went to the World Pipe Band Championships in Aberdeen with my father….my…

Concert of Live Breton Pipe Band Music at Lorient Next Month

By Laëtitia Bernigaud From August 7 to 16, 2020, we should have celebrated the 50th year of the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, entitled ‘Year of Brittany’, and half a century of contemporary ‘intercelticism’. It is hard to believe 50 years have passed since the arrival in 1971, in Lorient, of the National Bagadoù Championship, the forerunner of the Festival. In five decades the ‘Fête des Cornemuses’ associated with the first Lorient…

Editor’s Notebook: Nightmare Scenario/ Robin Fleming/ Classic S&Rs/ Piping for Trams

UK Government scientists this week predicted a ‘reasonable worst case scenario’ of 119,000 deaths in January and February next year during a second wave of Covid-19. As we all recoil in horror, it is worth bearing in mind that there are opposing views in the scientific community about all this, the lack of unanimity among boffins a feature of the pandemic. But if this unlikely and disastrous circumstance were to…