I am a member of a club. It’s been closed by the lockdown. The committee has asked that members pay their subscriptions anyway. The club needs the money to tide it over this difficult period. Otherwise it might go under. I don’t want that to happen. I can afford to contribute. I’ve paid up. The RSPBA have now made the same request to their member bands and they too should…

This year, due to the pandemic, the sound of the Highland bagpipe did not reverberate through the walls of Eden Court Theatre, Inverness. The Northern Meeting competition, which is really the foremost in piping, did not take place as scheduled. And with various newspaper reports telling of the theatre’s financial woes, we are now concerned for next year too. Eden Court has been the home of the ‘Meetings’ for a…

Last week’s story on the sorry demise of the Piping Times prompted quite a response from readers, writes the Editor. One suggested we make an offer for it (20 years ago maybe), and regular correspondent Ken Rogers from Calgary penned: ‘I read the submission regarding the final edition of the Piping Times fading into history. ‘For me, I retained 34 copies of the magazine of which you were the editor, …

In 1951 the SPBA NI Branch came into existence and while the majority of competing bands in Northern Ireland had joined it, St Patrick’s along with most of the bands from the Cookstown, Dungannon and Omagh areas, remained with the Northern Ireland Band Association. In 1951 the band won Grade 4 at the Cookstown Young Farmers Club contest at Loughery Grounds, Cookstown. The band must have joined the SPBA NI…

The committee of the Nicol-Brown amateur competition in the US deserve credit for instituting and maintaining a dress and deportment prize in their annual event. Looking at the photographs of the youngsters competing (above) is so much more pleasurable than had they been parading in shorts and t-shirts. The D/D winner, Kevin Darmadi, is top centre. The pipers are learning early on that the instrument and its music is deserving…