KEITH 3rd AT WORLDS!

The Keith Highlanders Pipe Band placed 3rd of 53 bands in Grade 4b at the World Pipe Band Championships, held today in Glasgow, Scotland. This is the band's 4th trip to the Worlds, and the best finish yet!

The band finished 1st in the morning qualifer--getting the 1st from both judges. They played 2nd of 12 in the final, which is not an optimum place to be in the order, but had great scores from the judges: 3rd from both piping judges, 10th from the drumming judge (yikes!), and 2nd in ensemble.

Another Seattle band, the Northwest Junior Pipe Band played in the Novice Juvenile grade and came in 5th overall after a 3rd place finish in the qualifier.

Simon Fraser University Pipe Band was 1st in the elite Grade 1 contest. It is SFU's 5th 1st place finish in 12 years.

Overall, a great day for Northwest pipe bands!

Complete results of all grades are available at the RSPBA's website.

Now, if I could just get my effin computer to play BBC Scotland's stream of the contest....

Kudos to NWJPB

The Northwest Junior Pipe Band took 1st in Grade 4 at yesterday's Perth, Scotland Highland Games. At least one of my former students is a member, so I'm really happy they've done so well this summer. This a perfect trajectory going into the Worlds on Aug 16th.

That said, as a member of the Keith Highlanders, I'm pulling for them even harder. KHPB wound up 5th out of the 24 bands in Grade 4 at Perth.

Many members of the Keith arrived in Scotland around 10pm the night before the Perth games, jetlagged and tired from the long journey from Seattle. Having done that a few times I know that other-worldly, disoriented feeling going out to compete in Scotland a few hours after stepping off the plane. They'll be in better shape for the Worlds.

It's been a very wet week in Scotland, but apparently the weather eased up a bit yesterday at Perth.

I'll be writing a bit more about the Worlds this week.

Olympic pipers

The other night while watching the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games, I was quite surprised to hear a pipe band playing off and on as the athletes paraded into the stadium.

At first I said "they must be there in person" then I thought "it's just a recording" because they were never seen on TV. Poking around the net today looking for results from the Perth, Scotland highland games, where the Keith Highlanders competed today, I came across this story on BBC Scotland about the Mains of Fintry Pipe Band, a Grade 4 band from Dundee, Scotland (home of marmalade). It said they were seen by Chinese officials who saw them on a tour of France and asked to go to Beijing to play. At first they thought it was a practical joke, as would I. Riiiiiight....a Scottish band playing in France, asked to go to China. I think I ate at that restaurant. Just once.

One of the pipers in the band said "never in a million years" would he have thought the band would do something like this.

Never say Never!

Good on ya boys!

How often does this happen?

Tonight while I was playing the sun down at Newcastle, Maurice Whitney led his girlfriend, Jenny Tyabina, up to the hill where I was playing. Apparantly he had something up his sleeve, which he proceeded to offer to her.

She's no longer his girlfriend. She said 'yes' so now she's his finace!

I think I have the most awesome gig in the world.