Piobaireachd Society Releases 2013 Set Tunes
The Piobaireachd Society this week announced their recommended set tunes for 2013 competition.
Senior Competitions (submit four, play one)
- The Blue Ribbon
- Lachlan MacNeill Campbell of Kintarbert’s Fancy
- The Old Men of the Shells
- Ronald MacDonald of Morar’s Lament
- In Praise of Morag
- The Prince’s Salute
- Isabel Mackay
- Lady MacDonald’s Lament
Gold Medal Competitions (submit four, play one)
- The Battle of Bealach nam Brog
- Clanranald’s Salute
- MacDonald of Kinlochmoidart’s Lament (No. 2)
- The MacDonalds are Simple
- Nameless (Hiharin odin, hiharin dro) (Angus Mackay’s MS)
- The Rout of Glenfruin
- The Vaunting
- The Young Laird of Dungallon’s Salute
Silver Medal Competitions (submit four, play one)
- Duntroon’s March
- Fair Honey
- Grain in Hides and Corn in Sacks
- Lady Anapool’s Lament
- Melbank’s Salute
- Lord MacDonald’s Lament
- All the Old Men paid rent but Rory
- The Parading of the MacDonalds
What are your thoughts on the tune selection this year?
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Macintosh of Borlum’s Salute
For our tune this week, I’ve selected one of 2012′s Gold Medal tunes: Macintosh of Borlum’s Salute. The player is Canadian Andy Rogers, playing at a regular meeting of the Eagle Pipers’ Society in Edinburgh in January of this year.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The Bicker
This is the first of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Our tune this week is the tune that won the Silver Medal: The Bicker. The player is Colin Clansey, who is from Kingston, Ontario. Colin has been a consistent prizewinner in the Ontario piping scene for at least several years, and according to what I was able to turn up with a few minutes on the internet is that he is the pipe major of the grade 2 Glengarry Pipe Band. This was really a great tune, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing it person. I hope you enjoy it as well.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday Bonus: Catherine’s Lament
This is the next of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Piobaireachd Wednesday Bonus: You’re Welcome, Ewan Lochiel
This is the next of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Catherine’s Lament
This is the first of the series of Piobaireachd Wednesdays resulting from my visit to Winter Storm on the weekend of January 13-14, 2012. I was able to watch the U.S. Silver Medal almost in its entirety; I heard and recorded 17 competitors. I won’t post all of the recordings here (as I mentioned before the tune selection was not widely varied), but I will post the prize list. The top five players ended up playing four different tunes, so I figured the repetition would be minimal there.
Working up the prize list, our fist tune is Catherine’s Lament. The player is Jamie Troy from Victoria, British Columbia. Jamie is also an accomplished drummer, having played snare with the Spirit of Scotland Pipe Band when they competed at the Worlds in 2008. As you can tell from this recording, he knows a few things about piobaireachd as well; this solid performance earned him fifth place. Enjoy!
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Glengarry’s March
Our tune this week is from a “match” of the Eagle Pipers’ Society. The player is Derek Midgley, who is originally from New Jersey and has resided for some time in Glasgow. He’s distinguished himself as a solo competitor in Scotland, and I think you can see why from this video, recorded in November 2010.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Sir James MacDonald of the Isles’ Lament
Piobaireachd Wednesday is back on track this week, with another tune from the most recent online competition from Jori Chisholm at bagpipelessons.com. The player is Owen Capon, playing one of my favorite tunes: Sir James MacDonald of the Isles’ Lament. This tune landed him in the prize list of the grade 2 piobaireachd competition, placing 5th out of 12 competitors.
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for MacSwan of Roaig
Our tune this week is a little gem I dug up from YouTube: Pipe Major Gordon Walker playing Lament for MacSwan of Roaig. I don’t know where or when this was recorded, but definitely worth a listen.
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: My King Has Landed In Moidart
I must admit that I’m very disappointed in you, the readers of Piobaireachd Wednesday. For many weeks now, I’ve had to comb the internet for tunes, and that’s not the intention of this feature. If you have a tune that you’ve been working on, please consider recording it and sending it off to me. Remember, no judgement, no criticism, just music.
Anyway, our tune this week is from Jori Chisholm, a professional piper who lives in Seattle. He’s made a name for himself on the competition circuit, and was also one of the first pipers I was aware of to incorporate the internet into his teaching. This video of My King Has Landed In Moidart was recorded at Winter Storm in 2008, and this performance won him the U.S. Gold Medal that year. I think you’ll agree that it was indeed a fine tune.
This video is split into two parts, so be sure to catch the ending of the tune in the second video.
Part 2:
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The Glen is Mine
Last week Piobaireachd Wednesday presented the blog author’s winning piobaireachd from the BagpipeLessons.com Online Competition, and our tune this week is also from those results. Nicholas Lundberg took second place in the grade piobaireachd with The Glen is Mine, and here is his tune:
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The Rout of Glenfruin
Our tune this week comes again from the author of this blog. For the sake of diversity I’ve tried to not include a lot of my own playing, but this week I make an exception to present my submission for Jori Chisholm’s most recent online competition. This ended up being the winning tune in grade 1 piobaireachd.
The tune is The Rout of Glenfruin, which is one of the tunes I learned this fall in the Dojo University piobaireachd class, taught by Bruce Gandy. The tune was written to commemorate the Battle of Glenfruin in 1603, which was a rather lopsided victory (hence the title).
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: I Got A Kiss of the King’s Hand
As it turns out there’s a lot of good piobaireachd recordings on YouTube, and while looking through some of them this week I came across this one. Recorded at a recital at North West England Piping Society in 1993. The player is Brian Donaldson, former pipe major of the Scots Guards, and his tune is I Got A Kiss of the King’s Hand.
Unfortunately the tune is in two parts, but it’s worth the slight inconvenience.
Part 1:
Part 2:
If you’d like to have a tune featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart
I’ve featured MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart before on Piobaireachd Wednesday, in a rather unique version. This week we’ll have a more traditional version of the whole tune on pipes. The piper is Alasdair Mackenzie, whom I know nothing about, but he has this video floating around on YouTube, recorded in the tuning rooms at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow.
The tune is one of my favorites, and appears on my ever-growing list of tunes I need to learn. The ground is very pretty and has a mournful quality to it. It is not an easy tune, but Alasdair does a great job with it. Enjoy!
If you’d like to submit a tune to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Battle of Auldearn #1
Last week Jori Chisholm announced his third online piping competition, which have been very successful. The first competition was in January and February, and was expanded to include piobaireachd events for the spring competition.
Videos of the winners of each event were posted online, and our tune this week was the winner of the grade 2 piobaireachd. The piper is Stephen Ross, whom I have never met, but I’d like to some day. His tune was the Battle of Auldearn #1.
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: The King’s Taxes
Our tune this week was submitted by Andrew Douglas, the pipe major of the Oran Mor Pipe Band from Albany, NY. He chose to send a recording of The King’s Taxes, which was made during his professional piobaireachd competition at the New Hampshire Highland Games on September 17.
He tells me that he didn’t place in the top six in the contest, which is an indication of how tough the competition was. Thanks for sending your tune, Andrew!
If you’d like to submit a tune for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Lament for the Viscount of Dundee
I’m contributing to my own Piobaireachd Wednesday this week with a tune that I’ve learned in the past few months: Lament for the Viscount of Dundee. Informally known as “The Viscount,” this is the tune that was the catalyst in the love of piobaireachd that resulting in starting this feature on my blog.
The inspiration for learning it came around quite accidentally. For a while I’ve been thinking I should learn this tune, and one morning in early May I set my iPod on shuffle as I was walking to class. A recording of The Viscount by Roddy MacLeod was the first track to come up, and I enjoyed it so much I listened to it again. My walk to the engineering library is almost exactly twice as long as the tune, and from that day I began listening to it on my walk to school and my walk home. It didn’t take long to have the tune mostly memorized, with only barely looking at the music.
This recording was made yesterday afternoon in the fellowship hall of a church near my home. I used the Audio Recorder application and built-in microphone on my MacBook Pro.
The playing is not perfect, but that’s not the point of Piobaireachd Wednesday. The tune is relatively new for me, and I’m in the process of refining it. As I listen to the recording, I realize I have a lot of refining to do.
If you’d like to submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Battle of the Pass of Crieff
Our tune this week is submitted by Vince Janoski, also known as Pipe Hacker. Vince plays with Oran Mor Pipe Band from Troy, NY, and he’s chosen The Battle of the Pass of Crieff, and had this to say about his tune:
I sent along an audio file of me playing “Battle of the Pass
of Crieff” from back in December. It’s a practice recording so
soundwise, my blowing is not the greatest, but not too bad. There is also a
misstep in the A-Mach just near the end that mars what I thought was a
pretty good run through.
I tend to play the tune a bit slower and less driving than is usually
expected. I like to think of it as the rowing tune it probably originally
was, so I’ve been working on getting the momentum going. I’m looking forward
to fielding it at Altamont.
Thanks for sending this in, Vince! If you’d like to submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: Duntroon’s (MacDonald’s) Salute
For the last year or so I’ve been following videos from the Eagle Pipers Society. From what I understand, the Society was a fixture of the Edinburgh piping scene for many years, having grown out of informal gatherings that started in the shop of Pipe Major George Stoddart. The Society was on hiatus for about 25 years, and then reappeared on the scene in January 2010. They meet on alternate Tuesdays at in Edinburgh, and within a few days some videos and a “match report” appear on their YouTube channel and blog.
I especially enjoy what seems to be a fairly informal setting. Instead of the pressure of competition, it appears to me to be a setting where one can share tunes and be rewarded immediately with a drink. I’d love to start something like this in my area, and have been thinking about it for a while.
Anyway, the is the setting of this week’s Wednesday Piobaireachd. The player is Tracey Williams, the tune is Duntroon’s (MacDonald’s) Salute, which is a silver medal tune for 2011. This was recorded at the August 16 meeting of the Eagle Piper’s Society. Enjoy!
To submit a recording for Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me!
Wednesday Piobaireachd: Desperate Battle of the Birds
This week’s tune is one I recorded at a professional piobaireachd contest a few years ago. The player is Eric Ouellette, who plays with Oran Mor Pipe Band. He’s playing the Desperate Battle of the Birds, which is one of my favorite tunes.
If you’d like to submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please contact me!
Thursday Piobaireachd: MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart
This week we’ll have to settle for a Thursday Piobaireachd instead of Wednesday. Sorry about that.
Again I didn’t have any tunes submitted, so I went crawling the interwebs looking for a good tune. This one came up: visual piobaireachd. Barnaby Brown is rather an expert in many aspects of piobaireachd, and in this video he performs a visual canntaireachd that was developed in the 1970s.
Canntaireachd is an oral teaching tradition that was used to teach piobaireachd before it was ever written down. Each note and embellishment have a specific sound, and by singing them one is able to convey the technical details of the tune (what would be written on the page) as well as the expression and presentation.
In this video, Barnaby Brown adds a visual aspect to the canntaireachd as he sings and signs the ground of Maol Donn, also known as MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart or The Widow’s Grief.
If you’d like to submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please contact me!
Piobaireachd Wednesday: You’re Welcome, Ewan
I did not receive any tunes this week, so I’ve decided to post a piobaireachd that’s out there on the interwebs that I’ve enjoyed listening to. The piper is Dave Mason, who is currently of Cincinnati, OH and formerly of South Africa. He has a few piobaireachd videos on his YouTube channel, and for this week I’ve picked “You’re Welcome, Ewen (Lochiel).” It’s not a tune I was familiar with, but after listening to the video I rather like it. It’s not a long tune, but it is meaty enough to have been on the Silver Medal list.
Happy listening!
Notice that this was not recorded in a competition or performance, and that is exactly what I’m looking for in Piobaireachd Wednesday submission. If you have a tune you’d like to share, please contact me.
Don’t mess with the classics
As I write this, I’m preparing for the second day at the Glengarry Highland Games, the site of the North American Pipe Band Championships. It’s a two day event, with amateur solo piping and drumming events taking place Friday and professional solos and bands on Saturday. I spent a good part of yesterday at the games, floating around and watching some of the solo competitions. I sat in on a few of the Gold Medal (Canada) performances, and it really scratched my piobaireachd itch.
I happened to hear a bandmate play in her grade 3 piobaireachd competition. It wasn’t a tune I was familiar with and it sounded pretty nice to me, but she said afterwards that the judge had chewed her out for the version of the tune she played. Her instructor had given her a setting different from the “accepted” one, and the judge didn’t like it. As a result, this very talented and promising young piper did not appear in the prize list.
I’m not pleased with the judge’s reaction in this case. In a lower grade contest such as this one, players are still new to piobaireachd and play tunes chosen by their instructors as taught by their instructors. This particular piper didn’t know one version from another and was just playing what she had been taught. The judge should take that into account and make his decision based on the performance itself. Regardless of what setting was played, how well was it played? That’s the only thing that should factor into the contest results.
What I’m most upset with here is the student’s instructor, who is teaching students her own particular setting of this tune. I’ve pondered the subject a bit since yesterday, and I think I’ve decided that you shouldn’t mess around with the old tunes. Stick to the authoritative sources. An orchestra performing a Beethoven or Mozart symphony wouldn’t dare change notes on the page. There is certainly room for interpretation (listen to the same piece of classical music performed by two different conductors and you’ll see what I mean), but that doesn’t involve changing what’s written.
As for piobaireachd, leave the old tunes untouched. Notes are notes, and the composer had a good idea of what he wanted when he assembled those tunes. Feel free to add your own interpretation, but do so within the notes that are written.
Piobaireachd Wednesday: MacLeod’s Controversy
Our tune this week is a special one: MacLeod’s Controversy, played by John MacLellan in 1964.
Here is John MacLellan’s bio From Andrew Lenz’s list of Who’s Who in Bagpiping:
MacLellan, John A., Capt. (1921 – 1991) Scottish. World class piper and composer. A career soldier, initially with the Seaforths and later with the Queens Own Highlanders. At 19, was the youngest PM in the British Army. First piper ever to be commissioned as an officer. Won every major title including Gold medals at Oban and Inverness and the Clasp for Piobaireachd. From 1961-1974 was the Director of Army School of Bagpipe Music. Revised the book, Logan’s Compete Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe and published many collections of bagpipe music including Bagpipe Music for Dancing andCeol Beag agus Ceol Mor. Longtime member of the Piobaireachd Society and was Honorary Secretary of their Music Committee. For a number of years was in demand as a judge at the Argyllshire Gathering and the Northern Meeting. Awarded MBE by the Queen for services to piping in the early 1960s. Ran summer schools for young pipers in North America. His son Colin was born in 1958.
The tune was sent to me by his son Colin, a distinguished piper himself, whom I met at a piping summer school a few years ago. Thanks for sending it in!
To submit a recording to be featured on Piobaireachd Wednesday, please email me at jnwahlgren@gmail.com.
