Pipe Major Robert Brown Bagpipes- Donald Cameron, Arniston Castle, John McKechnie

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• published: 01 Mar 2014
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Pipe Major Robert Brown playing msr Donald Cameron, Arniston Castle, John McKechnie Pipe Major Robert Urquhart Brown was born near Banchory, Kincardineshire, Scotland in 1906. He received his early instruction in piping from Pipe Major Ewing and G. S. Allan. In 1927 he began his twenty years of study with John MacDonald, M. B. E. of Inverness. He won the Gold Medal for Piobaireachd at the Argyllshire Gathering at Oban in 1928 and followed that up with the Gold Medal at the Northern Meeting in Inverness in 1931. He went on to win the Clasp at Inverness in 1947 and again in 1951. Brown served as Pipe Major of the Gordon Highlanders through the war years and for about forty years as the Sovereign's piper at Balmoral where he worked as a stalker and a fisherman, as well as piper, retiring in 1970. Bob Brown was renowned as a teacher. Many of the top competitive pipers of Scotland made their way to his door and were never turned away. Donald Lindsay, of the Invermark School of Piping in the US, first heard him play in Scotland in 1964 at a funeral where he played "The Earl Of Seaforth's Salute" in sub-zero temperatures. The quality of the performance nearly blew Donald away! Later still, he heard a BBC Radio broadcast of Brown playing "Lament for Alasdair Dearg MacDonnell of Glengarry" and he had never heard it played that way before. "All the piobaireachd I had been taught was like hearing the music in black and white while Bob Brown was playing in colour," says Lindsay. "He was so expressive." Donald and his father arranged to bring Bob Brown over to the US to teach at Invermark in 1966, and from 1968 to 1971 he came over every summer during which time he made a number of recordings of the music he was teaching at the School. It was from these tapes that Donald Lindsay later went on to produce the recording being reviewed in this article. Brown's teaching was, in fact, in great demand worldwide. During an extensive teaching and performance tour of Australia and New Zealand, however, he became ill and died at Balmoral in April of 1972.