ScotFestBC
Open Pìobaireachd Competition
This is the highest level of piping competition and takes place Friday evening in the Cultural Education Tent starting at 5:00 pm. This event attracts the best professional players from the Pacific Northwest competing in this classical form of highland bagpipe “big” music.
Come, sit back, close your eyes, and let this music by our best pipers transport you to another place. A piobaireachd can be as long as 20 minutes, played expertly on a finely tuned instrument. It is one of the highlights of the Games for the true aficionado. This event is free, and will be hosted by BC Pipers’ Assn. Life Member Hal Senyk and judged by Mr. Robert Worrall of Ontario.
Cultural Tent: Friday, June 20, 2025. 5:00 pm
Champion BC piper Jack Lee performs “War or Peace” – a rarely heard pìobaireachd at the More Ceol Mor recital at Mosspark Armoury in Toronto, January 31, 2015. Video courtesy: Pipes/Drums Magazine.
What is Pìobaireachd?
Courtesy: The Piobaireachd Society
Piobaireachd, pronounced “pea-brock”, is the classical music of the Great Highland Bagpipe and for which the highest awards in the bagpiping competitions world are given.
A more general term is Ceòl Mor (Scottish Gaelic ceòl mór) meaning the “Great Music” which separates piobaireachd from the more popular dances, reels, marches and strathspeys which are called Ceòl Beag or “Little Music.” There is freedom in the piobaireachd to express joy, sadness, or sometimes in the “gathering” tunes , a peremptory warning or call to arms.
Piobaireachd is an art music genre unique to the Great Highland Bagpipe that consists of a theme or “ground,” which is repeated and underlined in a series of variations of increasing complexity that follow the theme. This usually progresses to the crunluath variation, where the piper’s fingers give a dazzling technical display of embellishment or gracenotes.
The theme is often very slow, and the general effect of the whole piece of music is slow – slowness being a characteristic of Highland music. They are anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes in length and present the performer with technical, musical and tonal challenges to address to give a high quality performance.
