My first international playing experience was a trip to the inaugural Scottish Highland Games in San Diego, California, in 1974 with the Edinburgh City Police Pipe Band. The trip also involved the band playing at Disneyland and SeaWorld in San Diego, and in Tijuana in Mexico.  It was interesting to discover at that time that San Diego had a Cameron Highlanders Pipe Band which had existed since 1946 and that…

The Piobaireachd Society’s ‘Talk Piobaireachd’ sessions continue tonight at 8pm GMT. These well-attended online lecture/discussions are open and free to all members of the Society. If you are not a member you can join here. Standard membership per annum is £15 (senior) and £5 (student or junior). This evening’s session will be led by PP Editor and Society President, Robert Wallace on a topic of his choosing. This series has…

Today we have the penultimate batch of piping photographs from desktop wizard Ronan Maguire of St Laurence O’Toole Pipe Band, Dublin. Ronan has generously given his time and expertise to clean, enhance and and/or colour a whole host of historic piping pictures. More than that he has kindly made them available to PP readers as free downloads. The first picture today is from the Argyllshire Gathering, Oban, in 1970. Ronan…

There is no doubt that the year 2020 was a total disaster for the piping and pipe band community in many respects as a result of COVID-19, but one positive aspect which did emerge was the tremendous interest, fellowship and community spirit which exists in piping and pipe band music worldwide.  This depth of interest may not normally be publicised widely and may not be well understood by members of…

This was the 25th anniversary of the NPC Junior Competition and the first time the event has been held online due to the pandemic and lockdown. While we missed hosting the competition in The National Piping Centre, the online format allowed us to add six more categories to the competition, including a new Freestyle competition. By Andrew Bova Additionally, we had a record entry this year with 132 competitors, including…