The Breakthrough Weekend
Saturday morning, and I'm working on the upcoming summer school, updating web pages, and waiting for the results from the British Pipe Band Championships in Belfast. I made that trip with ScottishPower in 2007, and it was a really fun trip: staying in downtown Belfast [much different than when I was last there in the early 80s!], a miserable wet, cold day, and then a very late night on the town. Hope the guys have better weather, a stronger play, a good result, and just as much fun after! Anyway, back to topic.

Last weekend the band had what I would call a breakthrough of sorts. Followers of the blog and/or the band will note that from our near-death experience in 2007 to now, we have been rebuilding a band that lost many of its long-time members over a two-year period. Following two Scotland trips in 2005 and 2006, we had a natural exodus of people: leaving to play in Grade 1 bands, putting band aside for work, school, family, and some just packing it in because they were fed up. It's the usual way of things. The band had to miss a whole season of competitive practice and performance in 2007, and we started searching for enough players to make a band. Most of the players came from Grade 4 bands. There isn't exactly a deep Grade 2 talent pool in the area.

Anyway, we survived 2007, and in 2008 started to compete again, taking a serious thrashing every time out, which wasn't often, because we didn't know a 2nd MSR until June 2008! Last year's Maxville trip was a lot of fun with a great group of people, and we were last in an 8-band contest. Coming into this season, we had higher hopes, but still lots to do, and it took us until last weekend to perform the way we wanted to. For the first time in a long while, we were pretty happy with both MSR [#2!] and Medley performances. The exciting part is that neither was our "best possible" by a long shot. For the first time since we started competing again, we took first places from judges against the Winnipeg St. Andrew's Pipe Band [piping and drumming], and it seems that we are once again competitive with good bands at our level.

So, here's to the breakthrough, and hopefully, we can build on that with hard practice, and solid performances. Videos are below. And while I was writing this, ScottishPower came through with a 5th prize in the British, and Grade 2 marvels, soon-to-be-grade 1 Inveraray & District Pipe Band won the British with straight firsts. Well done!