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Piping competition

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Piping competition
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Pipe bands have been a notable cultural and social feature of life in Scotland for well over a century, particularly in the towns and villages and industrial communities of Central Scotland. Mining communities for example sustained a very strong tradition of pipe bands and music-making, particularly between the 1920s and the 1970s. The pipe band movement now spans continents, including North America, Australia and New Zealand, and involves many thousands of players across the world who come together in competition seasons where the bands are graded in increasingly rigorous and spirited contests. This image is from the Museum of Piping in Glasgow.

The Museum of Piping was opened in the National Piping Centre in Glasgow in 1995. The Centre acts as a national and international centre of excellence for the bagpipe and its music and offers tuition at all levels within a purpose-built school. It is housed in a former church and manse in McPhater Street, Cowcaddens, in the centre of the city, next to the Theatre Royal, the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. The Centre has its piping school with rehearsal, practice and tuition rooms, a performance hall, reference library, hotel accommodation and restaurant as well as the Museum of Piping itself.

The Museum of Piping has been assembled by the National Museums of Scotland from their collections of bagpipes and related material. The Museum describes and illustrates principally the Great Highland Bagpipe and some of its history. Drawing on the collections of the former Royal Scottish Museum, the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and the Scottish United Services Museum, the displays also look at the richness and variety of the piping traditions of Britain and Europe. Open storage in drawers below the display cases adds more examples and information to the sequence of instruments in the exhibition.

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