MacColl wins Alasdair Gillies Memorial Recital-Competition Champion for record 8th time

Glasgow – August 15, 2024 – Before a capacity crowd at the Strathclyde Suite at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Angus D. MacColl of Benderloch, Scotland, won the 2024 Pipe-Major Alasdair Gillies Memorial Recital-Challenge Solo Piping Competition, the progenitor of Piping Live! and, for many, the crowning official festival event of the week. It was the eight time that MacColl won the event, beating his own record.

Also competing were:

• Callum Beaumont, St. Andrews, Scotland
• Alex Gandy, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Stuart Liddell, Inveraray, Scotland
• Matt MacIsaac, Aurora, Ontario, Canada

All of the players have played in the event before.

Each invited contestant plays a 25-minute (but no one is ever DQed for going over) performance comprising tunes of their own choice, but which along the way has to include the ground of a piobaireachd and a competition-style MSR.

As is tradition, the competition was judged by five unidentified experts scattered in the audience. Each is asked to assess the musicality of the performance rather than track faults. Judges ranked players from one to five, and the piper with the lowest sum wins. Ties are broken by the most first-place rankings.

A quick clip of MacColl’s prize-winning performance:

Stuart Liddell won the 2023 Gillies Memorial Recital-Challenge for a fifth time.

The event is named in honour of the late Alasdair Gillies, one of the greatest competition light music pipers of all time, who died suddenly in 2011 at 47.

The contest started in 2004 by renowned piper Willie McCallum and George Wood as a relatively impromptu event called the Lord Todd Bar Recital-Challenge, held at the namesake establishment at the University of Strathclyde.

Wood and McCallum, who worked in the university’s accounting department at the time, recognized that the hundreds of pipers and drummers in Glasgow for the World Pipe Band Championships were often bored senseless and filled their time in pubs. The event quickly grew into a packed and occasionally raucous spectacle with truly spellbinding performances.

As they have every year since 2004, McCallum Bagpipes were the underwriting sponsors, including the pandemic years when the competition was staged online.

Previous winners:

• 2003 Angus D. MacColl
• 2004 Angus D. MacColl (2)
• 2005 Angus D. MacColl (3)
• 2006 Gordon Walker
• 2007 Stuart Liddell
• 2008 Angus D. MacColl (4)
• 2009 Angus D. MacColl (5)
• 2010 Angus D. MacColl (6)
• 2011 Stuart Liddell (2)
• 2012 Gordon Walker (2)
• 2013 Gordon Walker (3)
• 2014 Not held
• 2015 Not held
• 2016 Stuart Liddell (3)
• 2017 Stuart Liddell (4)
• 2018 Angus D. MacColl (7)
• 2019 Callum Beaumont
• 2020 Callum Beaumont (2)
• 2021 Callum Beaumont (3)
• 2022 Matt MacIsaac
• 2023 Stuart Liddell (5)
• 2024 Angus D. MacColl (8)