In Motion

Welcome back after a great weekend of piping and drumming!

Some really exciting stuff this weekend. Mad Plaid was a great success again. While turnout for the amateur events during the day was low, the evening's pro contests went extremely well.

The Pro piping was won by new comer Matt MacIsaac (sp?). I'll let you know when I have some background on Matt, but for now suffice to say he's incredible, and playing with this air command band here in Winnipeg. It was a real pleasure to watch him rip through a great medley.

Other news for the pro piping was young Andrew Laird making his first pro performance. Andrew played quite well and though he didn't beat his former teacher (Clarke Stockton 2nd place) it was nice to see the future of piping in Manitoba.

Drumming was quite an experience. Originally I had no intention of playing but it seemed like a good idea when I signed up saturday morning. Saturday night, the four open snare players gathered in the warm-up room and, perhaps without knowing it, attempted to show off to each other until the show started.

It was really something to watch Dave Bowman, and Jeremy White warming up. Dave showed control I've rarely seen, it was awesome watching him practice his MSR for the World's Drumming Championships this coming weekend.

Jeremy was warming up with various licks from Duthart salutes and managed to scare the living daylights out of me. I've never seen sticks move that quickly. Very cool!

In the end the dust settled and Dave won the day. I played last and so, didn't get to see anyone play. I must have sat on a horseshoe or something earlier cause I squeaked by with second place, with Jeremy 3rd, and Ian Aastrom (CRPB) 4th.

Hopefully this contest will set the stage for a really great solo contest season in the pro circuits.

There's a lot of movement in the grade 1 scene. For the most part this all gets noticed by pipesdrums.com and everybody gets the ooo ahhhh factor. This year is no different.

SFU has reported its new roster and I've gotta say...... wow. Just plain old wow. Good luck to anyone trying to beat that band this year. They took the greatest band on earth and added even better players.

Check out the article on pipesdrums.com for the rest of the shuffle.

For grade 2 in Winnipeg you'll probably have to check here for our own private shuffle. I'll let you know our roster asap.

Enough for now though, I have a mid-term in an hour or so, and I haven't even finished watching the 2008 World Solo drumming online. I'm way behind.

Good luck to Dave Bowman who is on his way to Scotland today! He'll compete against the best of the best. We'll be rooting for you Dave!

Cheers everyone,

See you at practice.

Sean