Piping Live! and the World's: Some Observations

Piping Live! has grown in eight years to be an absolutely outstanding week, and full credit must be given to Roddy MacLeod, M.B.E. and the hard-working staff and volunteers at the National Piping Centre. There is no question in my mind that the Piping Centre has been THE driving force behind the development of the week we now have, and even the RSPBA [which does an excellent job managing and promoting the World Pipe Band Championship] has picked up the cues left by the early Piping Live! to develop the World's "package."

It was impossible to see and hear everything at the Festival, and the range of experiences available has grown enormously. There were solo piping concerts, contests and recitals; band practices, concerts and sessions; and piping music from many cultures. There were talks on history and traditions, language, song and museum tours. In George Square there were many kinds of bands, whisky tasting, Scottish food market, crafts and lots of marching!

A highlight of the week for me was the ScottishPower Pipe Band concert on Wednesday. Not only did the band sound great as a pipe band, but the orchestral pieces they did were outstanding. Part of what made them outstanding was the significant risk involved in trying to pull such elaborate music together with limited [cost factors] rehearsals. The band's success in the concert was inspirational, and it also provided some really great moments, such as during the encore when P-M Chris Armstrong started solo into a slower arrangement of "Castle Dangerous," and the audience joined in and sang along to the tune. When the pipers joined him for the next-higher tempo, the audience carried on singing. You could tell from the reaction on stage that it was a great moment for them, too.

At the World's on Saturday, I took the opportunity to listen to bands warming up for the MSR final, and then see them in final tuning. You can learn a lot about the way bands operate by watching them in the final moments before they compete. There are lots of different approaches, and seeing the top Grade 1 and 2 bands preparing to go on was [as always] food for thought about how to modify what we do at the CRPB.

Some point-form highlights overall:

• hearing the Armagh Pipers Club group - outstanding
• uilleann piper Cillian Valley
• ScottishPower concert
• Anxo Lorenzo
• hearing Dowco Triumph Street PB in the George Square performance, and then in the medley final at the Worlds. This band has developed tremendously [as you would, having to compete regularly with SFU] and they have really made a mark in the Grade 1 class.
• watching SFU, Power and Inveraray tune up.
• FMM's medley performance: absolutely brilliant in every way
• Michael Grey's recital of his compositions at the Piping Centre.
• Seeing that the World's Grade 1 results were overall about right, despite some questionable individual judging decisions