We have secured our venue and catering for our Robbie Burns event to be held Jan 28th 2023. Tickets are available at https://airdriescots.ca/product/burns-2023-tickets-jan-28th/
Groups of 5 can use coupon code “burnsgroup” to receive 10% off.
We have an early bird pricing valid through Dec 24th.
Will we see you Saturday?
We are performing in the Carstairs Parade of Kilts this Saturday. We will be in the parade, performing a 20 minute set, as well as playing in the massed band.
We plan on having a Band Tent set up, so come say Hi!
The band is performing this Saturday early afternoon, and will be holding our weekly practice immediately afterwards (weather permitting), in Nose Creek Park. This will be a relaxed practice, and an opportunity for the community to come out and meet the members of the band.
We expect to be there around 1:30p.m. and expect to wrap up by around 3.
If you play, are interested in learning, or Highland Dance, come say Hi!
Also, we are looking to add Brass and Reed instruments to the band, so if you play one of those, we’d like to speak to you!
With Tartan Day being only 6 weeks after our Robbie Burns concert, we have decided to postpone the Spring Concert until late May or even early June.
We will consider participating with other groups in conjunction of a tartan day event.
I hope you are excited about this year’s Robbie Burns as I am. All of the performers have been practicing their hearts out, and we are ready to go! We will be holding the event in the Maritime Pub and Eatery on Jan 29th 2022.
This is a relaxed semi-formal event. Most of the performers will be in kilts. If you have one, we invite you to wear yours as well. If you don’t, we ask that you dress in business casual, or better.
The performers will start at about 6pm. We will have some solo-ists, some poetry, and the Dance For Life dancers as well as The Airdrie Scots Pipes and Drums.
About 6:30pm we will be piping in the Haggis. It will then be properly addressed.
Dinner this year is being done differently. As we are hosting in a pub, you are free to order off of the menu. Or you can purchase tickets to their Roast Beef or Haggis dinner specials. The door entry fee does NOT include the cost of your dinner!
After dinner, we will have traditional Burns dinner activities – the toast to the Lassies, the reply, etc. After this, we will resume with performances.
At 8pm, the pub’s live entertainment (Low Tide) will start their evening sets.
There will be a silent auction held. We will be able to take cash, cheques, credit and debit.
The Fraser Highland Shoppe will also be on site. They are donating all net proceeds from sales this weekend to the band!
This is a cash bar.
Our event typically lasts 4 hours.
The pub will be handling the ticket sales on your behalf through their Eventbrite event. We will update this page with the link once we have it!
The event is open seating.
We are looking forward to seeing you there, and I hope you will have as much fun as I will!
p.s. We’ve created a mailing list so that you can keep up to date about this event. Subscribe here.
Meeting minutes will be posted over the next week or so.
We made the difficult decision tonight to postpone our Robbie Burns dinner and performance until March. This is to allow us to see how Covid continues to play out, as well as give us some additional time to prepare for the evening. That said, we are intending to partner with a local pub to have a “pub night” (maybe afternoon) the weekend after the Bard’s birthday.
We also confirmed that we will continue to practice Sunday afternoons. New members are always welcome.
With the easing of restrictions, the band wants to get out into the community. We intend to hold a practice on July 2nd in Nose Creek Park starting around 7 P.M. for those that wish to come listen, and meet the members.
This practice will depend on the weather. The forecast right now is for in the 30’s so we will be playing by ear whether it is too hot or not to hold the practice.
With the easing of restrictions announced earlier this week, we are resuming in person practices.
We have room for a few more players before we hit the 10 limit.
We will be 3M spacing (minimum) during playing. The floor of the warehouse we practice in has 10×10 ft squares so the measurements are easy 🙂
We wear masks when not blowing the pipes (drummers get to wear theirs all evening).
We maintain the spacing even in sectionals and full band on practice instruments.
We are also looking to add some Brass and Reed players to augment the band. Think Royal Regiments on Parade style.
This will be the first year since the band formed that we will NOT be holding a Robbie Burns dinner and performance.
Our annual Robbie Burns event is our major fundraiser for the year. Fortunately, we do have a few things that have been donated to us again this year. See our Store for items up for auction.
In addition, if you attended last year’s event you will recall that the Fraser Highland Shoppe was in attendance. They donated the net proceeds from the sales that evening, resulting in us receiving over $500 last year. This year, they will donate the net proceeds from any sales from now through the end of January for anyone who uses our affiliate link https://shop.fraserhighlandshoppe.ca/?raf=ref8600169 when shopping online, or who mentions this post when shopping in person.
And for those of you who wish to virtually attend a Robbie Burns event, there are a few online events occuring.
We held a band practice last night. While in the strictest sense we could have followed social distancing guidance and gathered in one large place, we took a different approach.
We fired up Zoom video conferencing and gave that a try. We will continue to work out technical challenges, but here is a few things we experienced with our first try:
Fortunately, the Pipe Major had previously recorded each of the medleys as an MP3 for each member to practice with during the time apart, so we were able to stream that from the meeting host (including the bass and snare parts on his side) so everyone was able to play along together even if we couldn’t hear all the other players.
We hope you are staying healthy and safe!
