New Piobaireachd Set tunes for 2025
The VPA are introducing Piobaireachd set lists for A and B grade for the 2025 season. After surveying the playing membership there was an overwhelming response in favour of introducing the Set lists in line with New Zealand’s Comunn na Piobaireachd Society and the Piobaireachd Society in Scotland.
Set list tunes for Gold and Silver (A and B grade respectively) are a standard practice in solo piping around the World and it is well overdue for them to be introduced in the VPA. In order to help the transition, especially for A grade, we have reduced the contest tune requirement from 4 full piobaireachds to 3 full piobaireachds from the Set list. Additionally, the VPA Executive will be seeking assistance from World class tutors to provide educational materials (zoom tutorials and workshop recordings) and make these available in the Member’s Area for paid up VPA members.
For C, D and Novice grade, we will be expanding the current list to include some of the previously listed B grade tunes. This will give much more choice for competitors and tutors to select a wide variety of the more ‘classic’ tunes, of various difficulty, and help the development of our lower graded pipers.
We understand that this will be a challenging change for some pipers, but believe in the long run will raise the standard of our piping community.
Jonathan Quay
President – VPA