Online Piping Competitions

Hats off to New Zealand. This past Monday (June 8) marked the first day since February that there’s been no active cases of Covid-19. Among many other pleasant pre-pandemic freedoms, the country can again hold public events without limitations on numbers. Thinking of piping and pipe band competitions the Royal New Zealand Pipe Bands’ Association enjoyed a pipe case full of good luck in the timing of their final contest of the year. Presented in the South Island city of Invercargill on the weekend of March 13, the organization’s national championship came in just under the quarantine wire. I thought at the time it would be the world’s final pipe band championship of 2020. And I may be right (sadly). Barring, of course, some kind of online “championship” – just the kind of post-apocalyptic thing New Zealand pipers and drummers can take off their to-do – or worry – list.
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A Jig is a Jig

THERE was a time when I thought that one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life was to play Peter MacLeod’s tune Donald MacLean, twice through in the jig final at the Northern Meeting.
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Alex MacMillan: It’s a Small World

It’s a small world must be one of the most often said bromides in the English language. But, surely for a reason: it is a small world. The top-of-the-small-world-pops in my family belongs to the story of my younger sister and her husband.

Here’s the scoop: After meeting and date number three or so they start talking a little about their families. He says to her something like, my Mum’s family comes from a little place in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland: Benbecula. Yikes, thinks my sister or something like that. That’s where my father’s mother comes from!
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10 Favourite Musical Memories of the Noughts

Yikes. Its two days to 2010. Cliche alert: it seems like yesterday … we were all freaking out about the apocalyptic possibilities of a new millennium. Then, as now, I was working in the technology field and clearly recall being assigned a “war room” shift. For those not familiar with the tech business staple of system recovery, the “war room” is a small group of multi-skilled people charged with restarting failed computer systems. I was the scribe of the group (an important role, of course). With black marker at the ready I was set to record the crashing systems and falling sky. Continue reading 10 Favourite Musical Memories of the Noughts…

Tea with Lord Lovat

When I think of early September I think of the Northern Meeting in Inverness, Scotland. The grand daddy of all solo bagpipe competitions. It’s the number one event on the solo piper’s calendar; or, maybe more correctly, the solo piper with the most experience, the nimblest fingers and s/he amongst the select global one hundred and fifty or so pipers who aspire to `the medals`: the oldest, most venerable prizes offered in the Highland bagpipe world. Of all the indelible memories I have of times spent at the Northern Meeting none stand out more than the one not directly related to bagpipes: tea with Lord Lovat.
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