You may have seen the notice on the Piobaireachd Society web page: Conference Report 2016.

In addition, Rab Wallace gave his perspective on his very informative website Piping Press. He also followed up with a blog post regarding Colin MacLellan’s publication of the piobaireachd compositions of his father, Capt. John McLellan, MBE.

If you are interested in purchasing the material from Colin, contact him here. He will send you the book and two CDs of audio taken of competitors at the John MacLellan Memorial Recital/Dinner.

There were four exciting presentations (three of which Barnaby Brown video recorded and will be made available shortly):

• John Wilson presented the College of Piping lecture on Piobaireachds of Donald MacLeod.
• J David Hester presented on Alt Pibroch Club: Re-extending the Idiom by Recovering our Tradition.
• Simon Chadwick presented on clàrsach ceòl mór He wrote of his presentation to the Society on his website. There you will see a video of his speech and performance, as well as a PDF of his slides.
• Colin MacLellan presented on his father’s piobaireachd compositions.

One of the most interesting take-away from the conference was the unanimously held opinion that something exciting is happening with pibroch: it s not only being kept alive - we are helping it to thrive.

Five very similar and concrete proposals were presented to the Piobaireachd Society during the course of these presentations:

1. Include more modern compositions, such as Donald MacLeod’s, in the Set Tune’s lists.
2. List all versions, with links, of each tune in the Set Tune’s lists.
3. Re-introduce urlar refrains to be played after each variation doubling and reduce tuning time.
4. Change competition format to require multiple tunes, allowing tuning in between.
5. Require competitors to learn any two pibrochs not published by the Piobaireachd Society.

What do each and all of these proposals represent? The recognition that pibroch is ready for the impending phase of expansion - an expansion of style, an expansion of setting, an expansion of compositions.

Interestingly, it looks like the Music Committee took up a combination of proposals one and five in the new Set Tunes list:

Silver Metal Competitions - Competitors will submit two tunes from each group [Group 1 - Piobaireachd Society, Group 2 - Donald MacLeod], one of which they will be required to play.

We live in exciting times. Celebrate!