The 19th annual pipes|drums New Year’s Honours

Formidable! That’s one word to describe the year 2019 for piping and drumming.

The last 12 months were, as always, filled with accomplishments and advances, celebrations and controversies, the thrill of victory and the thrill of it all.

As we have done every year since 2001, it’s time again for the pipes|drums New Year’s Honours. We once again put together a panel of 20 accomplished pipers and drummers from around the world to vote on nominees who stood out last year. Only the panelists know who they are, but each was picked to mitigate any risk of conflict of interest in their voting.

We asked our panel to make a comment or two about why they made the choice they made, and we include a few of them here.

This year, for the first time we include a new award: Association Leader of the Year. There are some terrific trailblazers and controversial figures in our midst, and they step up for what are generally voluntary and mainly thankless jobs. It’s our hope that acknowledging leaders for their work will play a part in encouraging them and others to innovate and persevere to make the piping and drumming world better.

Due to the relatively few commercial recordings released in 2019, we included the best of those as nominees for the Product of the Year award.

This year there were seven categories:

• Pipe Band of the Year (all things considered, in addition to competition)
• Piper of the Year (encompassing all aspects of their work)
• Solo Competition Piper of the Year (considering strictly competing success)
• Drummer of the Year (encompassing all aspects of their work)
• Association Leader of the Year
• Product of the Year
• Event of the Year

Now then . . . on to the results . . .