Testimonials

I don’t think I can put into words how thankful I am for your generosity. This opportunity is one I have been dreaming about for a long time and I can promise you both and everyone at the GDMT that I will not waste a single moment of it. I will of course keep you all up-to-date on my experiences there and will be keeping a blog noting my musical adventures on Cape Breton Island. A million and many thanks.

A follow up: I am going to struggle condensing my time on Cape Breton Island into a couple of sentences as there was just so much wonderful music and moments, but I’ll try my best. Being immersed in the island’s music and culture was such an incredible way to experience how strong an influence Scottish music has had across the Atlantic. Attending several square dances, sessions, and Gaelic language events across the island really helped to improve not only my piping but musicianship as a whole. It has also helped me to establish strong relationships and friendships with musicians/folklore enthusiasts across the province which will be very important for my future studies.

I am so thankful to the Gordon Duncan Memorial Trust for helping me make the most of this opportunity – and with the amount of Gordon’s tunes that were common repertoire across the island his legacy helped me make a simple transition and integrate amongst the local musicians.

Since receiving of our award in April 2017 we were able to cover a large amount of tuition during 2017, chiefly for our drummers.  Through this, we were able to compete in a number of minor competitions and in the four mainland “Majors”, qualifying for the Grade 4B final in two of them.

There is no doubt that the Trust’s generous award helped greatly in our continuing development.  We now have a stable band of over twenty players, and would anticipate further progress in the coming season.

This is just a quick line from the Skye Youth Pipe Band to update you following the grant support from the Gordon Duncan Memorial Trust earlier this year. We used the grant to buy drum tutor books (The Drummers Launch Pad Study Unit 1) from Elixir for our 21 drumming pupils in February. 15 out of our 21 pupils are still going strong. 6 snare drummers have progressed enough to join the Band and have received their band uniforms. A number of pupils have also started attending our weekly Development Band practice, which feeds gradually into the youth band. The 6 top snare pupils and our 2 tenor drummers have almost completed Study Unit 1, and we will be purchasing some copies of Study Unit 2 before the end of this year. We also had some very successful “Come and Try” sessions at the beginning of this term, and we have 18 new drumming pupils signed up to start weekly lessons after the October holidays, which is very exciting. So thank you again for helping us along the way.

We have just had the first of two workshops funded by yourselves at the Gordon Duncan Memorial Trust. This was a great success, giving the members tutoring of the Shetland style of fiddle music from Ross Couper. Also cello tutoring from Emma Tomlinson which adds depth and variety to the final sets that were created from the day. We now have a new set of Shetland tunes which will be incorporated in our repertoire for future concerts. We are grateful to the Trust for giving us the opportunity to expand the repertoire of our members. The second workshop is planned for August with Solasta and we will give an update on this, after the event.