Nick MacLean new Pipe Major for Mid Argyll band

The innovative and individualist Mid Argyll Pipe Band finds itself under the direction of a new Pipe Major and he’s one of their own – via a continuing membership of the triple World Champion Inveraray & District Pipe Band.

Nick began his piping career playing with Mid Argyll Pipe Band. Then he joined the Inveraray and District Pipe Band, contributing to its succession of three World Championship wins at Novice, Juvenile and, in 2009, at Grade 2 level.

He will continue to play in competition with the Inveraray & District band but becoming Pipe Major with the Mid Argyll band gives him the challenge of leading and shaping the development of a band.

Nick is excited by the nature of the work the MId Argyll Pipe Band do – working with Wild Biscuit music in innovative musical development, producing, among other things, the well received CD, Blackwood and Hickory, developing a long term relationship with Poland’s Czestochowa Pipe Band and touring both abroad and in the UK.

He says:  ‘This is a great opportunity for me. The Mid Argyll band has been really successful of late with its Blackwood & Hickory project and I’m aware past Pipe Majors have set a high standard for me to follow. I’m looking forward to working with the band and applying my experience with Inveraray to the concert music the band has been working on and also to renew friendships with the Częstochowa Pipes and Drums from Poland. I’m ambitious to succeed with the band’.

Rod Buchanan, President of the Mid Argyll Band says: ‘We want Nick to bring his experience with an exceptionally successful competition band to Mid Argyll Pipe Band, to improve our music and to work with our partners, including Wild Biscuit Music, to continue and improve both the traditional parade music and our brand of vibrant, high energy concert style performances’.

And so say all of us. Argll has a great colletion of pipe bands and the Mid Argyll band has cut a unique path for itself. The marriage of the specific qualities of the fluency and precision of the Inveraray band, under its renowned Pipe Major Stuart Liddell, with the openness to musical experimentation of the Mid Argyll band is going to be fun to witness.