By Willie Bryson Pipers around the world played at the annual Remembrance Day parades last weekend to honour the war dead. Here, one veteran piper of the Highland Light Infantry (HLI) looks back on his days before, during and after World War 2 . . . I was born into […]
Bagpipe.news caught up with Finlay Johnston shortly after his second Glenfiddich win last weekend. 1. You travel quite a bit. Is there anything you can’t leave home without?My pipes, my phone and headphones and maybe some paracetamol for the hangovers. 2. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?Bird saliva on […]
James Campbell, the well known piping and pipe band judge, decided to give his Tutor Room some character by hanging portraits of some of the great pipers of the past and present. The dedication of what is now his Pipers’ Room was held last Saturday when the portraits were unveiled. […]
Asked about his early days in piping, Bob McFie leans back in his chair in a teaching room in The National Piping Centre Otago Street and raises his eyes to the sky. “I was six when my father gave me my first practice chanter and about nine or ten when […]
This photo of Chris Armstrong was taken for a Q&A in issue 73 of Piping Today magazine in 2014. In the article Chris said of himself: “Generally, my friends would describe me a crabbit individual – the clean version – (laughs) who is very intolerant of stupidity. A real Oscar […]
Donald Patrick Nicholson, father of Duncan Nicholson of Glasgow Police Pipe Band, tutors a group of children on a weekly basis at Castlebay School on the Isle of Barra. Donald Patrick was born on Barra in 1941 and still lives on a croft in Ardveenish which belonged to his uncle […]
By Pipe Major Jim Henderson John McLellan, as I remember him, was a very shy and quiet individual, not given to pushing himself or promoting the great talent he possessed. Besides being a quite outstanding bagpipe music composer, he wrote songs, was a poet of some distinction and had a […]
The National Piping Centre is used to welcoming pipers from communities around the world but the visit of a group of monks for lessons was one of their more unusual teaching experiences. The main form of music in the Papa Stronsay community, also known as the Sons of the Most […]
