How good it feels to have something positive to report! The news that Piping Live! 2021 is to go ahead will be welcomed by everyone keen on clawing back some of the lost ground piping has suffered in the past year. Finlay MacDonald and his NPC team are leading the way in getting us back to where we once belonged. So as the blurb says: Save the Date! The festival…

Peter R MacLeod was one of the finest ever composers of music for the great Highland bagpipe. Much has been written about him but this article contains some new information direct from his grandson Kenneth, son of Dora MacLeod of the eponymous tune. Kenneth is known to the writer through a mutual friend on the island of Mull. Roderick Peter MacLeod, son of Hector MacLeod and Mary MacLeod (MacRitchie) was…

We had another very good uptake for The CLASP ‘March’ online event. With the cancellation of many Highland Games, CLASP’s next event will be ‘A Virtual Highland Games’ May/June 2021. The prizes will be sponsored by R.G. Hardie & Co. Bagpipes. The CLASP Virtual Highland Games will mark the end of the 2020/2021 CLASP year. Entries are now open for this event via The CLASP website.   Judges for the Maerch…

Ken Cameron of the Lochaber Piping Society reports: Our on-line Junior Medley Competition was very successful and the results are below. Just as an indicator of the impact of C-19 and the restrictions, the last ‘live’ Junior competition we held was in 2019 – two years ago – and we were really pleased to welcome back many familiar names as well as many new ones. As a measure of how…

Bruce Gandy made the point to me when he was playing for the Piobaireachd Society the other night that it doesn’t cost much to upgrade video and sound recording equipment – and for those competing online it was well worth the investment. Bruce had done so, and his performance of Jimmy McIntosh’s Salute to Andrew Carnegie was beautiful, and clear as a bell. If you have an old computer with…