Piping Press

The big event this weekend in the NI Piping calendar is the 3rd Kids with Cancer Charity concert which will be held tonight, Saturday 22nd February 2020, in the Royal Hotel, Cookstown. Gary Smyth and his organising team have put together a superb line-up including over a dozen elite drummers of which at least seven are former Adult World Champions.  Those appearing include current champion Steven McWhirter (10), all-time record holder Jim…

Activists have launched a petition to save music services in North Lanarkshire’s schools. It follows an announcement yesterday that the cash-strapped council must find £30m in cuts to their non-statutory budget this year alone. Music teachers and administrators were called to a meeting on Monday afternoon to be given the grim news. Under threat are the local authority’s school orchestras, wind and North Lanarkshire Schools Novice and North Lanarkshire School…

One of the world’s top juvenile bands, North Lanarkshire Schools, has been threatened with the axe following the announcement of stringent cuts by their sponsoring local authority North Lanarkshire Council. Music teachers and parents have been stunned by the announcement. One parent said: ‘Ultimately this all down to cuts to local authorities from the Scottish Government. ‘Who would have believed that an SNP administration could threaten a kid’s pipe band…

By The Editor A reader has contacted us to mention that his son played in a Piping Centre Junior competition Piobaireachd event last weekend. When the boy finished the judges called him over and told him that he had played well but that he had gone off the tune. The boy was surprised; he didn’t think he had. The father, in the audience, naturally asked the boy what the judges…

By Greig Canning, Inveraray & District PB The UK may have left the European Union but Scots pipers’ links with their Breton cousins are stronger than ever. Myself and a few colleagues and acquaintances from the Scottish pipe band scene were over in Brest in Brittany last weekend to play with various Grade 1 bagads [Breton pipe bands] in their Championship. I think each of the guys in the photo…