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Christmas comes to The National Piping Centre

Christmas comes to The National Piping Centre

The National Piping Centre in Glasgow city centre has a number of seasonal family events kicking off next month. This Sunday (December 1) sees the first of three Sing Along with Santa days. These feature ‘Piping Hot Santa Parties’ which are suitable for different age groups of children and include […]

Lochalsh Junior Pipe Band. Niall Stewart's youngsters had a good outing in the Novice Juvenile A grade.

Changes to Grade 4 and Novice Juvenile tunes

The Music Board of the RSPBA has announced more tune choices for lower grade bands competing next season. The new tunes are three two-part marches, three two-part strathspeys and one four-part strathspey. Three marches have been added: Coppermill, Corn Rigs are Bonny and the White Cockade. In addition, the two-part strathspeys […]

Brett Tidswell: Piping in Australia

Brett Tidswell: Piping in Australia

By Brett Tidswell The oldest pipe band in the southern hemisphere is arguably the Pipes and Drums of the Royal Caledonian Society of South Australia. The band was first established in 1894 in Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia. There is some argument that it was not a pipe […]

Scots Guards KO: Dew through

Scots Guards KO: Dew through

John Dew of Perthshire, Scotland goes through to the next round of the Scots Guards’ Knockout series. The Inveraray & District piper pipped Lewis Russell of Lanarkshire at the second quarter final this afternoon. The contest took place, as usual, at the Scots Guards Club in Haymarket, Edinburgh in front […]

Tunes in the key of A-Major

Tunes in the key of A-Major

Theory Top-Up by Tim Cummings Piping Today #72, 2014. This article is the third in an on-going series focusing on specific musical keys found in our Scottish piping repertoire.  Having already looked at the two most common musical keys in our light music, D-Major and A-Mixolydian, we’ll now put a […]

The real life of Mike Katz

The real life of Mike Katz

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 […]

Glasgow Police competing at the 2019 European Pipe Band Championships held at Bught Park.

Tickets on sale for the 2020 Europeans

Tickets go on sale today for the European Pipe Band Championships next year. The event, scheduled for Saturday, June 27, 2020 at Bught Park, Inverness will, organisers Piping Inverness say, build on the success of the 2019 event, which attracted over 17,500 visitors and over 100 pipe bands from around […]

Fun in the sun outside the beer tent at the 2018 World Pipe Band Championships.

‘Get rid of beer tent enclosures’ – study

Getting rid of beer tent enclosures and adopting a more ‘open park’ format instead, is one of the recommendations contained in a recent academic study into major pipe band competitions in Scotland. The study, undertaken by Amy Fenton of Napier University in Edinburgh, further considers it would be, “advantageous for […]

Kayleigh Johnstone overall in Pittsburgh

Kayleigh Johnstone overall in Pittsburgh

George Balderose of the Balmoral School writes: Kayleigh Johnstone of Aurora, Ontario was the overall piping winner of the annual Balmoral Classic piping contest held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last weekend. Remarkably, her brother, Colin won the George Sherriff contest held in Ontario that same evening. As well as the trophies, […]

Piping concert set for Inverness reprise

Piping concert set for Inverness reprise

Hamish Moore’s Cáirdeas Nam Piobairean vehicle for “promoting Scottish piping of all types” is to reprise its recent successful concert held at Blair Atholl the night before last month’s Glenfiddich. The concert will take place as part of the week-long Blàs festival across the highlands and islands and takes place […]