Archive

The 78th Fraser Highlanders won the 2024 North American Pipe Band Championship held in warm and muggy conditions before a large crowd attending the 75th anniversary of the Glengarry Highland Games. There were only two bands in Grade 1.

Against 14 other contestants, Ben McClamrock of Washington, DC, won the Piobaireachd Society (Canada) Gold Medal playing “Nameless – Hiharin odin, hiharin dro.” McClamrock welcomed the win, particularly after placing second in the event several times over the last 10 years.

According to the organizers, ticket sales for the Captain John A. MacLellan Memorial Medal Dinner-Recital on August 24th in Edinburgh have been brisk. The remaining tickets will be available for purchase only until 11 p.m. (BST) on Friday, August 16th. Held at the Waldorf Astoria Caledonian Hotel in the shadow […]

Glasgow Life, the overall organizers and licensees of the World Pipe Band Championships, have confirmed that the competition will once again be live-streamed this year by Glasgow Life. The Grade 1 competitions on Friday, August 16th, will be broadcast without commentary, apart from that of Fergus Muirhead, who will announce […]

With some 50 entered across all five grades, the 2024 Glengarry Highland Games are set to reclaim the title of North America’s biggest pipe band competition in what will mark the event’s seventy-fifth anniversary in the tiny farming community of Maxville, Ontario. The North American Pipe Band Championships will feature […]

Robert Kitts, an important figure in Canada’s Glengarry County piping and drumming community, died on July 26, 2024, in his eighty-ninth year. Though not well known in the wider piping and drumming world, Bob Kitts introduced dozens, if not hundreds, of kids to the pipes through his tireless, voluntary teaching […]

Angus D. MacColl of Benderloch, Scotland, enjoyed a rare perfect competing day of solo piping at the annual Arisaig Highland Games on the idyllic west coast, in sight of the Sgùrr of Eigg. The elder Angus won all four Senior events against a strong field of 20 other contestants.

We bring pipes|drums readers our exclusive 8,500-word March 2004 conversation with the late great Captain.

Alastair Lee of Surrey, British Columbia, edged out Zephan Knichel, also of Surrey, to take the Open Solo Piping aggregate trophy at the Pacific Northwest Highland Games. Simon Fraser University was the overall winner in the Grade 1 band competitions, with St. Thomas Alumni travelling from Houston to come away with a win in the MSR against the perennial World Championship contenders.

Simon Fraser University and St. Thomas Alumni shared the first prizes at the Pacific Northwest Highland Games at the Enumclaw Expo Center near Seattle.

Stuart Easton of Palmerston North, New Zealand, hopped across the water to compete in the Victorian Pipers’ Association’s Victorian Championships and Australian Piobaireachd medals at Presbyterian Ladies’ College and came away with a perfect day, winning all four of the events he entered. More than AUD$5,000 in prize money was awarded across all of the grades, and about 60 solo pipers participated in the competitions.

The Glengarry Highland Games will celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary on August 2-3 in Maxville, Ontario, with the help of Truro, Nova Scotia’s 6/8 march, the winner of a composing contest the games put on. From about 35 entries, Dupuis’s four-parter was chosen best by a panel of pipers and fiddlers […]

The Scottish Championships returned to their familiar Levengrove Park location, in sight of the famous Dumbarton Rock. Inveraray & District were the Grade 1 winners, the band’s first major championship win of the year.

Canadian piping and pipe band legend Ken Eller passed away on July 26, 2024, at the age of 77, following a long illness. A constant and ubiquitous presence on the Ontario piping and drumming scene, he gained worldwide fame as pipe-major of the Grade 1 Clan MacFarlane Pipe Band, one […]

Ross Miller is one of the world’s most creative and dynamically skilled pipers. He’s taking the stage with his band in Glasgow on Monday, August 12th, at the Hug & Pint on Great Western Road for a gig leveraging the throng of enthusiasts attending the Piping Live! Glasgow International Festival […]

Mount Hood Community College was once again the venue for the Portland Highland Games. The event has run for more than 60 years as part of the British Columbia Pipers Association’s competition circuit. Northwest Junior was the overall winner in the Grade 4 band competition, and Alastair Lee of Surrey, British Columbia, had the best day in the small Open Solo Piping events.