Updated: SFU confirms attendance at British Championships

The Grade 1 Simon Fraser University Pipe Band has revealed its plans to travel to Pitlochry, Scotland, in June to compete for the British Pipe Band Championship with an aim to complement the band’s usual August journey to the World Championships in Glasgow.

Currently there are no other Grade 1 bands in SFU’s home province of British Columbia, so the band has few, if any, opportunities to test itself against bands in the same grade. SFU has won four World Pipe Band Championship titles.

Pipe-Sergeant Jack Lee confirmed that the band will compete with new Naill chanters at the British Championships. He and Pipe-Major Terry Lee have been working for the past year with David Naill Bagpipe Makers on a new band chanter design. SFU has played Sinclair chanters since the early 1980s.

“The main reason we are going to the British is that we enjoy the challenge,” Jack Lee said. “We enjoy doing something significant each year prior to the World’s. That can range from recording a double CD, which we did last summer, performing concerts or travelling to other competitions. We have made the early trip to Scotland twice before, when the championships were held in Stirling and Ayr. These trips motivate us and are a lot of fun for the players.”

Lee said that SFU has three main goals that it is focusing on this year: the British Championships, the release of Volume 2 of the bands On Home Ground recordings, and the World’s.

The band also reported that it has added two prominent pipers to its ranks. The brothers Calum and James Beaumont of Bo’ness, Scotland, have joined the band after playing with House of Edgar-Shotts & Dykehead in 2005.

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