by JEANNIE CAMPBELL MBE. Donald MacKay, from Beauly (1880-1910) was a successful amateur piper, as was his brother Archibald, both winning many prizes at the London gatherings. Donald then turned professional and in 1902 he played at the Northern Meeting and was placed second in the Gold Medal. In 1903 […]
Features
Look back to Willie McCallum interview in Piping Today magazine
Piping Today #71, 2014. Willie McCallum is one of the piping world’s true greats. The music he makes is universally admired and reliably, over the course of his lifetime, he has performed at the most precise and astonishingly highest levels of sustained excellence. In the solo piping world he’s won […]
Andrew Wright in conversation with the Piping Times 2019
By STUART LETFORD. With the very sad news of the passing of Andrew Wright on October 23, 2022, we are republishing an interview Andrew gave to Piping Times editor, Stuart Letford, in late 2018. The interview was published in two parts in the January and February 2019 editions of Piping […]
History of the Argyllshire Gathering part 45
1980 BY JEANNIE CAMPBELL MBE. More changes were brought to the competitions at the Argyllshire Gathering in 1980. For the Gold Medal, first prize winners of this event at the Argyllshire Gathering were excluded and entry was restricted to those who had won a prize in a Gold Medal competition […]
Iain Bell shares a couple of tunes and talks of the Ulster Scots traditions that inspired his book
Iain Bell is a piper, composer, tune book publisher and the creator of the Donald Drone cartoon series that was a well-loved feature of the Piping Times magazine. His tune writing emerged at the age 13, after he had experienced a few years in a pipe band, but his serious […]
James Richardson VC and his pipes
by DAVID S. FORSYTH, Principal Curator, Scottish History & Archaeology, National Museums Scotland. This article first appeared as part of the Canadian chapter in: Stuart Allan and David Forsyth, Common Cause: Commonwealth Scots and the Great War, published by NMS Enterprises, 2014, and republished in Piping Today magazine in 2016. […]
Canntaireachd and graphic design: capturing its ‘expressive force’
By KATE CARPENTER and JOSHUA DICKSON. The Pibroch Network gathers together and makes accessible pibroch’s earliest primary sources with the means to explore them effectively, meaningfully, and collaboratively. It’s a network not only in terms of the comprehensive and interlinking database of repertoire and source material made ever more discoverable […]
A bagpipe story in the New World
A new book titled: Legacy – a collection of photographs and music has been published by Barry Shears. Barry was born in Glace Bay, Cape Breton in 1956, and is an acknowledged expert on the history of traditional piping in Nova Scotia and its intrinsic connection to the Gaelic language, […]
Pipe Major Ben Duncan reflects on his NYPBS experience and military career
By Pipe Major BEN DUNCAN: alumnus of The National Youth Pipe Band of Scotland. I grew up in Edinburgh in a non-piping family but I was always fascinated by the spectacle and sound of the instrument. Inspired by the buskers on Princess Street and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, my mother […]
Faces from the World Championships 2022 and more FM celebrations
Four weeks ago we awoke on the Sunday morning with the memory of a very warm Saturday full of sunshine at the World Pipe Band Championships, where Pipe Major Richard Parkes made history by winning his 13th World Pipe Band Championship in Grade 1. After a three year break from […]