Stuart Highlanders Pipe Band

Loon Mountain Results

admin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:28:41 +0000

The band concluded its best season ever with a weekend at the New Hampshire Highland Games at Loon Mountain in Lincoln NH. You’d have to call this our “home games” and its always one of our favorites. The band finished first in the grade 2 MSR contest on Saturday and 3rd in the grade 1 challenge. On Sunday we went on to win the open medley contest and win the Ken Smith Trophy. The trophy is named in memory of our old friend Pipe Major Ken Smith from the Scots Guards and we’ve had the honor or winning it each year since its inception. A tradition we hope will continue! We also put on a concert performance in the Governor Adams Lodge on Saturday night, check out the Videos page in the Media section for a clip of the Hellbound Train from this concert. All in all a very busy and fun weekend for us and a great way to wrap up the year. We learned some valuable lessons, like it is possible to win the drumming with only one bass stick!

The photo above shows an impromptu march up the ski slope to our condos led by “drum major” Adam Holdaway. I guess it was their idea of “fun” at the time and an appropriately “Stewie” way to end the season.

World Championships!

admin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:08:47 +0000

The Stuarts grade 2 band made its first trip to the World Pipe Band Championship, held in Glasgow Scotland on August 13. The band spent the week living at Strathclyde University in dorms putting in a lot of hard work and practice to prepare for the big day. To be fair there were quite a bit of Stewie Shenanigans mixed in as well, all part of what makes a trip like this so special. Be sure to checkout some photos from the trip on our Facebook page Here.

On the day itself, the band faced a field of 27 of the best grade 2 bands in the world, quite a challenge considering the biggest field we had seen previously was 9! The competition was divided into two qualifying heats, 6 bands from each advancing to a final. Our heat was particularly strong featuring the past two world champions and several other strong bands that had placed in majors this year. We played our #1 set of Highland Wedding, Maggie Cameron, and The Smith of Chilliechassie and went on the sweep straight firsts in the contest!

The band then went on to compete in the finals later that afternoon against the strongest 11 bands on the day. Drawing our number 2 set at the line, we played Donald Cameron, Dora MacLeod, and John Morrison of Assynt House. The band had another very strong outing and finished in the prize list at 5th place overall. The pipe corps was placed as the best in the finals as well. Overall this was quite an accomplishment for our first ever trip to Scotland and we certainly turned some heads over there. Videos of both performances have been added to our Videos page in the Media section

We were also very happy at the results for several of our EUSPBA bands with Oran Mor getting into the finals of the grade 1 contest and New York Metro winning the grade 3B world championship and drumming. All in all an excellent week for the Stuarts and for eastern US piping. We look forward to returning in 2013!

North American Championships Results

admin — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:11:54 +0000

Both the grade 2 and grade 4 bands made their way north to Maxville, Ontario to compete at the North American Pipe Band Championships on July 31. The annual event is held as part of the Glengarry Highland Games, the largest highland games in North America. The grade 4 played it’s Quick March Medley and finished in the prize list with a 6th place. Quite an accomplishment against a strong field of 17 bands.The grade 2 band produced it’s best result at Maxville with a 2nd place finish, with New Westminster Police winning the title. The band was second in both the medley and MSR events. Several of the band’s solo competitors also had excellent days, with tenor drummer Drew Nisbet winning the professional tenor contest and Quinn McCormack winning amateur drummer of the day.