Interviews

We conclude the exclusive pipes|drums Interview with Mike Cusack, the greatest competitive piper in American history. In this final installment, Mike Cusack looks at judging, teaching, and what the future might bring for the history-making piper.

The 90-year-old Connecticut native has been a member of the Manchester Pipe Band for 78 years and counting. Ritchie is a legend with players all over the northeastern United States and beyond.

In the penultimate Part 4, Cusack talks about the St. Thomas Episcopal School operation, inspiring students, the team buy-in required to be successful, and being a pipe band in football-mad Texas.

In the latest installment, we delve into the breakthrough years of the early 1980s, receiving instruction from Jimmy McIntosh, becoming the first American piper to win a Highland Society of London Gold Medal, and much more.

In Part 1 of the Pipes|drums Interview with Mike C …

Mike Cusack is beyond measure the greatest America …

The final installment of our exclusive conversation with one of the great contributors to the art of pipe band drumming.

Frank commentary on the Pipers & Pipe Band Society of Ontario, the chronic shortage of drummers in Ontario, and the roots of his nearly 50-year tenure on the association’s Music Committee. Fellow drumming leader Doug Stronach – also one of the world’s great contributors to the pipe band drumming art – conducts the fascinating and historically important conversation..

Did you know Hugh Cameron was the piping and drumming world’s first full-time dealer of exclusively pipe band percussion instruments? He was also the first full-time teacher of pipe band drumming, and he played a massive role in developing the modern pipe band snare drum. Our must-see / must-read interview continues.

In Part 1 of the exclusive pipes|drums Interview, …

For more than 60 years, the drumming teacher, mentor and guru has been a quietly caring and conscientious leader in the Ontario piping and drumming scene. Too often, the stories of true heroes like Hugh Cameron are left unsung, so it’s high time we sang. Doug Stronach, Hugh Cameron’s longtime friend and fellow drumming supremo, kindly agreed to conduct this extensive pipes|drums Interview, which we will publish in five parts.

We continue with the second and final part of the May 2002 pipes|drums Interview with Jimmy McColl. In Part 1, McColl discussed his background as a coal-mining piper growing up in Shotts, Scotland, his immigration to Los Angeles in 1956, and the start of the theories he formulated through independent research on piobaireachd. In Part 2, the prescient piper goes into more detail about his ceol mor findings, including his discoveries on “GDE Gatherings.” An irony is that McColl’s being in Southern California in the pre-Internet era removed him from the piping establishment that would undoubtedly have worked to tamp down his then-radical conclusions on the art form. The amateur piping aristocracy had worked successfully to standardize ceol mor since the formation of the Piobaireachd Society in 1903.

We revisit our May 2002 discussion with a courageous pioneer in the study of piobaireachd as he discusses ceol mor, piping in Scotland in the 1940s and ’50s, and his move to Los Angeles and that scene in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

In Part 4, the final instalment, MacLellan discusses reedmaking, the Competing Pipers Association, his father’s music, what he’d still like to do in piping and, of course, his other avocation in life: golf.

Exclusively for subscribers, in this installment we get into issues of conflict of interest and bias, real or perceived, in solo piping and pipe bands, including teachers judging pupils and even the Masonic tradition in the UK having a possible influence on the competitive art.