We have it on good authority that there are 2 minibus loads of ‘highly elated’ supporters of World Champion Inveraray & District Pipe Band’s Pipe Major, Stuart Liddell, on their way home from Blair Castle in Perthshire as we write.

Stuart Liddell has just won The 2009 Glenfiddich Piping Championships, for the first time and from a field of ten top pipers in the contest recognised as the World Championships for solo pipers.

He took 2nd in the March, Strathspey and Reel and 3rd in the Piobaireachd, winning the overall prize.

Liddell is unusual for a piper in being able to play at the highest level both in a band and as a solo piper, usually seen as incompatible.

This has been quite a year for the 2009 World Champion Solo Piper. He won the Clasp at the  Northern  Meeting, the win that brought him into The Glenfiddich. As Pipe Major, he has taken the Inveraray & District Pipe Band in an unbeaten run to the World Championships in its first year of competition in Grade 2 and seen it promoted to Grade 1 for 2010.

The selfless commitment Stuart Liddell has given to the band and to the development of its young players is widely recognised. No-one will be more delighted at this individual success of their hugely respected Pipe Major than each member of the band and each parent of a young band member who has had the privilege of being part of this quite extraordinary journey.

Placings in The Glenfiddich 2009 were:

• 1st Stuart Liddell
• 2nd Willie McCallum
• 3rd Roddy MacLeod
• 4th Bruce Gandy, Dartmouth Nova Scotia
• 5th Gordon Walker, Galston, Scotland (last year’s winner)

Worth noting that Argyll also had a stake in the second placed piper. Willie McCallum,  now from Bearsden, is originally from Campbeltown in Kintyre. McCallum’s was a close second place. Had he won, it would have been his ninth successive win. He took 1st in the March, Strathspey adn reel and 4th in the Piobaireachd.

Oban’s – or Benderloch’s – Angus MacColl took 4th in the March, Strathspey and Reel., reinforcing Argyll’s strength in depth in piping.

For the record, in the Piobaireachd, Stuart Liddell played The Earl of Seaforth’s Salute; and in the March Strathspey and Reel he played The Duke of Roxburgh’s Farewell to the Blackmount Forest, Atholl Cummers and The Little Cascade.

Related Posts

• Another prestigious piping award for Stuart Liddell and a win for Willie MacCallum (0)
• The Glenfiddich World Solo Piping Competition, 31st October (0)
• 2009 Hands Up for Trad Awards: Vote for Inveraray & District Pipe Band (0)
• Clean sweep for Argyll with Liddell and Henderson in solo piping at international Northern Meeting (0)
• Pipe Major Stuart Liddell wins all the way from Europe to The Gathering (0)

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