Chris Armstrong Wins Bratach Gorm

See pipes | drums coverage, which includes details of placings for Fiona Manson and Glenn Harris.

clipped from www.pipesdrums.com
London – November 3, 2007 - Chris Armstrong of Airth, Scotland, won the Bratach Gorm at the Scottish Piping Society of London’s competitions at London

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 2:51 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Chris Armstrong Wins Bratach Gorm”

  1. Stew Says:
    November 5, 2007 at 2:56 pm | Reply

    And a great day it was too with plenty of good music in the main Hall with its stately Baronial Hall-type acoustics – mind you, they should be good given the venue hire fee of £26K! The new Kensington location is most definitely at the moneyed end of the Monopoly Board.

    Unfortunately I missed the winning performance in the Bratach (too early on a Saturday morning for me!), but there were some excellent tunes besides notably from Willie McCallum and his Lament for the Children on a grand souding pipe, and from Jack Lee who made a lovely job of the Big Spree. Jimmy Murray also put in a bold and convincing rendition of the Earl of Seaforth’s Salute.

    The London Medallion MSR was a rather surreal contest with piper after piper breaking down including some of the Worlds finest, meaning only about half the field finished. Iain Speirs put in a flawless performance and I thought it would be tight between him and Gordon Walker, who was also excellent. Again I didn’t hear the winner, bugger it, but by all accounts Roddy put in a typical quality performance. Hawkeye couldn’t have been too far off the money in this one.

    Overall, great to hear some of World’s best pipers in London, and the Bratach is always a good time off the pitch as well.

    Cheers

    Stew

  2. PWM Says:
    November 7, 2007 at 4:13 am | Reply

    Thanks Stew. Why do you think so many broke down? end of season contest, having had a bit of a break?

  3. Stew Says:
    November 7, 2007 at 3:14 pm | Reply

    Well, perhaps. I’m not sure how other double MSR contests work in Scotland, but the pipers appeared to be receiving their tunes as they went on to the board, and a lot of them were double checking as they were tuning up. The Clasp in Christchurch is also a double MSR but tunes are received one in advance (or atleast they were last time I played in it) giving time to consider breaks and the order in which to play tunes. It seems a like a fairer approach to such a demanding event.

  4. Richard Hawke Says:
    November 10, 2007 at 9:05 pm | Reply

    Stew – tunes were given out on the board which was a real bone of contention amongst the competitors- thats the first time I’ve experienced that for a mmssrr. Found myself spending most of the tune up period memorising the tunes selected and working out the order I was going to play them in. Nothing like a challenge.

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