Piping Press

A hearty well done to Boghall and Bathgate for supporting the Princes Street Gardens contest last weekend but why on earth did they form up in a circle in front of the Ross Bandstand? With part of the band’s backs to the terraced audience it looked, from photographs I’ve seen, so last century. Goodness knows what the visitors must have thought. Would a brass band have shaped up that way?…

By Alistair Aitken OBE, former RSPBA adjudicator Saturday 15 June saw the second of the RSPBA Major Championships of 2019 (the UK Championships) which this year took place in Lurgan, Northern Ireland. Most readers of Piping Press presumably will know that the UK Pipe Band Championships replaced in 2014 the Championships previously held in Dunoon as part of the famous Cowal Highland Gathering. For the last four years the event has…

This is my second post on Piping Press with some observations and stats about the 2019 UK outdoor pipe band competition as the season progresses. By all reports the weather has not been particularly favourable to the bands at the majority of competitions so far this year. As with Brexit, the early experience of the outdoor season has also shown that ‘politics’ within the pipe band community as ever are never far…

We are grateful to Craig Munro of Wallace Bagpipes for forwarding these results from this EUSPBA sanctioned contest in the US. The picture above is of the Open winners at Ohio: Craig Munro, Nick Hudson and Laureano Thomas-Sanchez Open Piob 1 Nick Hudson2 Alistair Murray3 Laureano Thomas-Sanchez4 Sean Patrick Regan5 Alistair MurrayJudge: C MacDonald Open MSR1 Craig Munro2 Nick Hudson3 Laureano Thomas-Sanchez4 Dan Lyden5 Alastair MurrayJudge: S MacNeill Open H&J1…

After last week’s extremely inclement weather at Lurgan, bands and supporters basked in the sun at Antrim Castle Gardens last Saturday. The local pipe band fraternity cleaned the mud off their socks and shoes and dried out their capes for the trip to the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Pipe Band Championships. What a difference a week makes – this time around it was warm and sunny throughout with the various…