County Antrim Championships, Northern Ireland

Glenarm Castle on Saturday last provided a scenic backdrop for the County Antrim Championships, writes Gilbert Cromie. The championships took place as part of the first day of the Dalriada Festival which has become well established as one of Northern Ireland’s biggest cultural family events taking place at the iconic Glenarm Castle & Village annually each July with an attendance in excess of 30,000 over the two days. While it…

Northern Ireland Bands on Parade

John Kelly reports: Some of Northern Ireland’s pipe bands took part in the Sham Fight parade in Scarva on Friday 13th July.  The annual Sham Fight is one of the largest cultural events in Northern Ireland’s calendar and tens of thousands of people who flocked to the event enjoyed a great day out in wall to wall sunshine. The small and quaint Co. Down village has become renowned for hosting the…

PP Ed’s Blog: Worlds Draw/ Northern Meeting/ Darach & PM Angus/ Mod Results & Reminder

I don’t think we should be giving the RSPBA a hard time over the slip up with the Worlds draw. Errors of this sort are very rare within the Association and having attended the procedure I can vouch for the considerable care and attention to detail that is gone into in trying to get everything just right. As we say in Glasgow ‘nae body’s deid’. I did think it unfortunate…

Error Forces RSPBA to Revise Draw for Grade 1 at the Worlds

The RSPBA have had to redo the draw for Grade 1 at the Worlds following a mix up over last year’s placings. In a statement the Association said: ‘It has been identified that there was an error in the initial band placements used in the Grade 1 draw on Wednesday 11th July 2018. The 2017 MSR placings were used rather that the final Championship results. As a result the draw…

PP Ed’s Blog: Band MSRs/ Publishing Tunes/ Brass & Pipe Music/ PS Concert/ Alden Biesen

Listening to Field Marshal’s MSR from the All-Irelands last weekend, did I detect a very slight disconnect between drums and pipes in the last few parts of Pretty Marion? Wrong to make assumptions based on videos of course, all sorts of things get altered in transmission. I may be talking rubbish, but it would tie in with the ensemble judge placing them behind SLoT. Have a listen: Those who read…