Wallace Bagpipes News

The National Piping Centre recently held its New York Piping and Drumming School in Babylon, NY and Wallace Bagpipes would like to congratulate all the students who attended the week.

The instructors were Glenn Brown, Margaret Dunn, Craig Munro and Andrea Boyd who were all delighted with the progress the pupils made.

The week was augmented by the presence of Pipeline Celtic Themes as the piping supplies shop at the school. This was a fantastic addition to the school, and it was great to have a local business involved.

We once again showed our support to The National Piping Centre’s workshop with the donation of a £250 Wallace Bagpipes voucher which went to John Keane for the Most Dedicated Student of the week, pictured below with instructor Glenn Brown receiving his award.

Student Comments and photographs below (courtesy of Kathy P. Leistner).

“I felt that the instructors from The National Piping Centre are of the highest caliber in bag piping, instruction and commitment.”

“I learned a great deal about maintenance, reeds etc.”

“It is very helpful and i learn something new every time.”

We hope that the students enjoyed their week as much as we did and we hope to see all our North American friends there in 2012.

The Fifth edition of the Dutch Recital contest was held in Venlo (NL) on Sunday 12th December. Four invited solo pipers each played for 30 minutes. “We came up with the idea after visiting the pre-worlds recital challenge at Todd’s Bar” said organizer Ivo Meek. The only real difference is that the Dutch competition is judged by the audience who rank the competitors on a voting form.

Before the recital Craig Munro of Wallace Bagpipes presented his “Understand & Appreciate Your Bagpipes” lecture leaving the audience amazed at how much goes into the making of bagpipes behind the scenes.

To celebrate the fifth birthday of Recital contest, four international pipers were selected: Cap Caval PM Hervé Le Floc’h, Red Hot Chilli Piper Kyle Warren, Piping Centre instructor John Mulhearn and Shotts and Dykehead piper Craig Munro. Hervé played the first recital. Of course he treated the audience to some wonderful Breton airs. Kyle Warren took a different approach; he played some of his own tunes (from the collection Tunez) and even performed a few “Chili style” dance moves. John played a couple of John D Burgess tunes on a brilliantly balanced set of pipes, with a very strong musical expression. Craig Munro played last and set off playing a strong set of 4/4 marches and slowly speeded up his recital with hornpipes and jigs.

The reactions from the audience were extremely positive and the players visibly enjoyed performing on the event. The recital organizers would like to thank their sponsors Carrynette & Piperscorner Shop. The organization is already preparing for the 2011 edition. If you want to be a part of the competition (attending, sponsoring, or even competing), you can get in touch with the organization through our website: http://www.recitalcontest.nl

Results

1^st – John Mulhearn

2^nd – Craig Munro

3^rd – Kyle Warren

4^th – Herve Le Floc’h

The Pipers’ Corner 5th Annual Winter School took place in Bruggen between 6th – 13th February. David Johnston, the organiser was very pleased with the results of the first collaboration and sent us this report.

“Without a doubt the best, most successful and structured Winter School to have ever taken place in Brüggen – this was the response and feedback received from the students throughout the week!!  The move to collaborating with the highly professional “National Piping Centre” in Glasgow to provide instructors for the week proved to have been a complete success.

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Students received a structured timetable for their lessons, which offered small group tuition of around 4 to 5 students per class and one to one tuition in the evenings.  Everyone commented on how much their playing had improved and how much they had learned in just one week.

We held a solo piping and drumming competition on Wednesday evening to offer students the possibility of experiencing playing under pressure and this went down well with everyone, as an important step to progressing with performing and playing skills.  We thank the National Piping Centre for sponsoring the first prizes with a free week of tuition at any of their Scholarship courses.

Each day from 14:15 to 15:15, we received a professional recital from each of the instructors, which proved a great way to tank up with the necessary energy to continue with the classes and learning for the rest of the day.  There were many lectures taking place during the evenings and on Friday night, we all went to Theo’s pub for our traditional end of course party.

The Graduation Ceremony and Concert was fully booked with the British TV recording the whole concert to be sent out on British TV at a later date.  There was also a live CD recording from the whole concert, which should become available on the open market early April.  We were delighted to have General Caplin (Senior Officer Commanding British Forces Germany), Mr Malcolm Scott (British Consul General), Mrs Terporten  (Deputy Lord Mayor of Brüggen) and  Mr Alistair Clark (Services Liaison Officer – Rhine Area) as our guests of honour for the evening.

We would like to thank our main sponsor “Wallace Bagpipes” for their generous £500.00 voucher which went to the most improved student, Dieter Brandl – congratulations to Dieter!
We are very happy to report that the family atmosphere has been very much retained at Brüggen and everyone reporting that they are already looking forward to next year’s Original Winter School, which will take place, as always, on the second week of February (5 – 12) 2012 with the National Piping Centre.