91Èȱ¬

Gary West introduces more top tunes of the bagpipe kind including a whistle stop musical tour of Australia, with sets from the Victoria Police, Nunawading and Western Australia Police pipe bands. There’s an archive gem too, with a dip into a 1980 studio session from one of the greats of modern piping, Pipe Major Gavin Stoddard, whose contribution includes one of the classic tunes from the pibroch repertoire, Ronald MacDonald of Morar’s Lament. Mother and son team of Margaret and Martyn Bennett treat us to their unique blend of tradition with a modern twist, the flying fingers of Davy Spillane feature on uillean pipes, while these hardy perennials, the Battlefield Band, show why they’ve been leading the way in bagpipe-infused folk music for five decades now. And talking of the half-century, we mark the anniversary of a certain release that spent five ‘amazing’ weeks at Number One in the UK Charts fifty years ago!