The William Kennedy Piping festival was founded in 1993 in Armagh, Northern Ireland and has gone from strength to strength BRIAN VALLELY, Festival Director, reports on this year’s festival. When the William Kennedy Piping Festival was first launched in 1994, we little thought that a quarter of a century later […]
Piper, teacher, reed maker, judge and all-around bon vivant, Colin has spent a lifetime around bagpipes. While he’s the son of a piping legend in Captain John A, he’s done the business and won the big piping prizes — and much more. In his life he has been a living […]
Ronald Lawrie of Oban (1927-2008) wasn’t called ‘Big Ronnie’ for nothing. But his broad-shouldered, 6ft 5in frame and imposing, square-jawed presence were almost incidental to his considerable stature in piping — and an involvement that began with direct influences from the 19th century and continues into the 21st century. He […]
While not cut from the cloth of the competitive piper, Mike Katz is one of the world’s most successful American-born pipers. Born in the Los Angeles region of the San Fernando Valley, he broke his piping teeth in his older brother Steve’s high school pipe band – along with a […]
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 […]
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 […]
