After a summer of cancelled events, Piping Live! Glasgow International Piping Festival has announced it will be live-streaming a mini-programme of this year’s event between August 8-14. In April, festival organisers had to cancel this year’s event due to the Coronavirus pandemic but after months of careful planning, the festival […]
James Blair Robertson was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1905. He was for many years a living legend among competing pipers and when he died, in London on October 2, 1988, one of the last remaining links with the leading pipers of the 1920s and 1930s was gone. Competitively, his […]
In 2010 Shotts and Dykehead Pipe Band marked its 100th anniversary. In the Piping Times of April that year, the band’s then Pipe Major, Robert Mathieson told the following story about one of the band’s great Pipe Majors, John K. McAllister. By Robert Mathieson It was Saturday, June 25, the […]
Tributes have been paid to Robin Fleming CBE who died peacefully at his Oxfordshire home on June 26 aged 87. Robin was a family patriarch and a non-executive director of a well known private banking firm, Robert Fleming & Co., whose headquarters are in London’s Mayfair. The firm had been […]
In this instalment of her father’s life, Edith Paterson (nee McHardy) takes the story to the 1920s and 30s. When we had been eight years at Little Drumlassie, a new laird lived at Whitehouse, and my father was invited to return as farm-manager. At the age of 62 years he […]
Hugh MacInnes (1949-2002) was one of the leading pipers of the 1970s and 80s. He had an outstanding record in light music and won the Former Winners’ MSR at Oban in 1982, the March in 1976, and the Strathspey and Reel in 1975. At Inverness, he won the March in […]
Ashley MacDonald, Director of the Lewis & Harris Youth Pipe Band writes: “The Lewis & Harris Youth Pipe Band [pictured] usually holds an indoor solo competition every year. It’s limited to residents in the Western Isles, from the Butt of Lewis to Barra, and with over 500 pupils playing/learning chanter […]
The second part of Alex Carruther’s article on the acoustical environment of the highland bagpipe out of doors has been uploaded to the site today. In his second part, Alex discusses how nature influences the transmission of sound. Alex’s piece appeared originally in the Piping Times over August and September […]
In part 1 of this article, it was seen that, to the listener of the Highland bagpipe, there are a few visible and invisible obstacles in the way of its sound. The piper standing on the ground is capable of sending the pipe music over great distances if the ground […]
Roddy Livingstone’s memories of some luminaries of the London piping scene, that appeared on Monday’s Bagpipe.News, rekindled a further memory, this time from Colin MacLellan, chairman of the Solo Piping Judges’ Association. Colin writes: “When my father [Captain John A. MacLellan MBE] won one of his Northern Meeting Clasps in […]
