By Duncan Watson With 60 to 70 pipers qualified to enter Silver Medal competitions and only 30 or less to be accepted, it follows that around 40 will be denied the opportunity of playing, assuming they all wish to take part. Has this log jam been a failure of the previously applied grading criteria? Are there really that many pipers of suitable standard to enter SM competitions? The recent announcement…
Last month the Editor visited Johnstone Pipe Band’s practice hall and took the opportunity of interviewing P/M Keith Bowes Snr. about the band’s recent success and the foundation on which it is built. Johnstone is a small town near Paisley, south west of Glasgow. P/M Bowes: We are in our 76th year so we were formed in 1943. The original purpose of the band was to march the local Home…
Welcome back everyone and a Happy New Year. Scotland still sleeps/celebrates but we appreciate the rest of the world is back out there earning a living and requires the daily PP fix to relieve the ennui… A good call in our comments section regarding HLI tunes and Robert Reid’s book ‘The Piper’s Delight’. It is a smashing wee publication but is probably out of print, though I notice a copy…
First excerpt we had some catch up headlines from Grade 2 but now a few further observations and plaudits for the wider pipe band world from the man they call MacStig…. In drumming, the British Drum Co, originally founded by some ex Premier experts and others, wisely signed Jim Kilpatrick as a man to assist their embryonic marching drums division. Jim was quickly followed by some younger turks of note…
Two notable pipe band devotees have been honoured in HM The Queen’s New Year’s Honours List. John Kelly reports: Mervyn Herron (above) from Northern Ireland said he is ‘over the moon’ after being awarded an MBE for services to the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association (RSPBA) Northern Ireland. The 67-year-old first joined the ranks back in the early 1980s and devoted over 30 years to the organisation before his retirement…
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