By Pipe Major Matt McKee, Chicago Stock Yard Kilty Band This year the Chicago Stock Yard Kilty Band is celebrating its 100th anniversary. We have operated continuously since being founded in 1921 by WW1 veterans Robert and Jim Sim after they emigrated from Aberdeen to Chicago after the war. Our band is arguably the oldest continuously operating pipe band in the United States. We have a unique and interesting history with…

This summer, the Balmoral School of Piping & Drumming will come to you online with a wider variety of drumming classes and more one-on-one tutoring for snare, tenor and bass drummers, writes Elaine Lee. Guest drumming instructors will be Jim Kilpatrick MBE and Ed Best. Jim has won a record 19 World Drum Corps and World Pipe Band Championships with Shotts & Dykehead, 15 of these as leading drummer. This…

The Annual General Meeting of the RSPBA was held last month online. To help bands bands stay focussed during this difficult period, Piping Press is carrying highlights from the various reports in the Association’s AGM order paper. The picture above is of the last ‘live’ RSPBA AGM in 2019. Chief Executive Ian Embelton reported: The number of bands in membership throughout the UK in 2020 was 275 and 51 affiliated…

I have diminishing confidence that there willl be a ‘normal’ pipe band season in 2022. If I accept that the reasons for this year’s wipe out were social distancing, masks, money, foreign travel then, I become even more sceptical. The UK government has indicated that, despite the easing of lockdown, ‘baseline’ measures such as masks and distancing will stay for another year. Foreign travellers coming here will be subjected to…

This is a fascinating subject to me as the Highland drovers would have brought music into England enriching the folk tradition. Much seems to be written about the music of the clan chiefs but not so much about the tradition amongst the working people and if readers have any information regarding the drovers who brought the Scots cattle down from the Highlands and Islands in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries I’d be delighted…