The line-up up for the digital-first Celtic Connections festival has been released – and there is, sadly but expected, a dearth of piping. The 2021 festival will be held entirely online every night between January 15-February 2, 2021. There are but a handful of concerts that will be of interest […]
By Roderick Cannon In 1651 a small book was published in London by John Playford, entitled The English Dancing Master. It contained the tunes and instructions for 105 country dances, and it was evidently successful, as it was quickly followed by revised and enlarged editions. The last edition was the […]
In September 1987 the Piping Times began a series called ‘Famous pipers’. Bessie Brown was the first piper to feature. The following month, at that year’s Glenfiddich, Bessie was awarded the Balvenie Medal for services to piping. She died in 1992. Below, we reproduce Seumas’ feature on Bessie. By Seumas […]
Two of Scotland’s leading live folk musicians are donating all their merchandise sales today to a Glasgow food bank. Pipers Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton are encouraging other musicians to do the same. In 2009, there was one food bank in Scotland. There are now 52 in Glasgow alone compared […]
I was thrilled by the prospect of Matthew Welch’s new book, A New Compleat Theory for the Highland Bagpipe immediately I read about it. Having been familiar with Matt’s playing for some years, and with his innovative work both as a composer and in collaboration with some of the US’ […]
The RSPBA has made tentative dates for some band competitions and championships for 2021. Clearly, they are dependent on current restrictions in Scotland and Northern Ireland being severely reduced by next spring. They are: British Championships (Paisley) – May 22Markinch Games – June 6UK Championships (Lurgan, Northern Ireland) – June […]
Stocks By Seumas MacNeill Having dealt with the bag situation the next obvious consideration is the state of the stocks you intend to tie on to your bag. Most people probably feel there is not much in the way of maintenance to be done on the simple five wooden tubes, […]
By Seumas MacNeill Archie MacNeill composed Donald MacLean’s Farewell to Oban in 1938 at a time when he was probably at his most prolific in producing tunes. That was the year of the ‘Crisis’ (which itself was responsible for the production of a tune by Willie Fergusson), the time when […]
John Dew, one of our leading piping talents, has produced his debut collection of pipe music. The book, titled simply Pipe Tunes, contains over 80 new compositions entirely from the Crieff-born piper’s pen. The book is available at £19.50 but this will increase to £22.00 on December 14. There will […]
Delvinside, according to Keith Norman MacDonald (1835-1913), is one of our finest strathspeys and also one of our older ones. It is idle to speculate as to who composed it at this time of day as it has been for so long printed anonymously. The locality of the tune has […]
