Final Results for the November 2011 Online Piping Competition

This year we've launched several new, ground-breaking features here at BagpipeLessons.com, including the world's first-ever online piping competition, giving pipers the chance to compete against others pipers from around the world. We followed up with a second online competition for Spring 2011, adding more events and more world-class judges.  And this fall, we launched a new and expanded BagpipeLessons.com Online Competition for November 2011 with even more events and another top notch judging panel. We received a new all-time record number of nearly 300 individual entries. High-quality videos were submitted by pipers for 31 different events in 11 different ability levels and age categories.  Pipers were judged by their competition video recordings, each competitor received a complete sheet of comments from the judges, and the prizewinning videos have been posted for the world to see (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

The final results are posted below, including the overall top winners in each competition grade level, the age category winners and the overall champion and scholarship winner for the first-ever P/M Alasdair Gillies Memorial Challenge.  Also, posted below are the winners of these categories:  Best Video Background, Best Dress and Deportment, and Best Quality Video.

In the coming days, we'll be posting a complete library of the entire competition, including each of the prizewinning videos from every event.  We'll be posting the videos of all of the competitors who asked to share their videos.  Also, many of the competitors were interested in reading the judge's comments sheets from the other competitors.  So, we asked each competitor if they would like to share their comments sheets and we'll be posting those, too.

BagpipeLessons.com Online Piping Competition for November 2011 Final Results:

Overall Most Points in Grade 1 Events
1. Ernesto Góngora (264 points) - Mexico
2. Nathan Wahlgren (144 points) - USA
3. Graeme McCombe (132 points) - Canada
4. Nicholas Lundberg (112 points) - USA
5. Kyle Banta (63 points) - Canada
6. Ross Wilson (41 points) - Canada

Overall Most Points in Grade 2 Events
1. Malcolm Mackellar (238 points) - Australia
2. Andrew Donlon (175 points) - USA
3. Patrick McLaurin (151 points) - USA
4. Andrew Yu, Chun Kit (138 points) - Hong Kong
5. Claus Reiss (88 points) - Denmark
6. John Daggett (64 points) - USA

Overall Most Points in Grade 3 Events
1. Bill Urquhart (238 points) - USA
2. J David Hester (201 points) - USA
3. Bryan Laidlaw (148 points) - USA
4. Ben Gibbons (138 points) - England
5. David Vermeulen (56 points) - USA
6. Laureano Thomas Sanchez (38 points) - USA

Overall Most Points in Grade 4 Events
1. Tom Hyatt (151 points) - USA
2. Sean Borwick (112 points) - USA
3. Marty McKeon (88 points) - USA
4. Guido Riedemann (88 points) - Germany
5. Derek Stine (88 points) - USA
6. Mary Thrasher (81 points) - USA

Overall Most Points in Grade 5 Events
1. Carlo Musitelli (210 points) - Italy
2. Jennifer Campbell (113 points) - USA
3. Rick Johnston (88 points) - USA
4. Steve Joubert (88 points) - South Africa
5. Rena Toomey (86 points) - USA
6. Peter Anderson (81 points) - USA

Beginner (practice chanter)
1. John JT Taylor (88 points) - USA

Overall Most Points in All Events 
(including Open Medley and P/M Alasdair Gillies Memorial Challenge)
1. Malcolm Mackellar (326 points) - Australia
2. Ernesto Góngora (264 points) - Mexico
3. Patrick McLaurin (239 points) - USA
4. Bill Urquhart (238 points) - USA
5. Nathan Wahlgren (216 points) - USA
6. Carlo Musitelli (210 points) - Italy

P/M Alasdair Gillies Memorial Challenge 2/4 March
This new event was created to honor the great piping legend, Alasdair Gillies, who recently passed away.  Alasdair will go down as one of the greatest pipers in history, and many agree was THE greatest player of competition style 2/4 Marches.  For this event, pipers competed by playing a single 2/4 March.  Prizes were awarded in several different age categories, and the first place winners were judged against each other to determine our first-ever overall champion and winner of a $200 scholarship to go towards their piping tuition.

In addition, the overall winner receives an year-long membership to the all-new BagpipeLessons.com Studio -- the world's newest and most exciting bagpipe learning website.

First Place Winners (by age category)
Pipers 12 years or younger: Sean Borwick - USA
Pipers age 13 to 14: Laureano Thomas-Sanchez - USA
Pipers age 15 to 17: Malcolm Mackellar - Australia
Pipers age 18 to 20: Sarah Simpson - Canada
Pipers age 21 or older: Kyle Banta - Canada

P/M Alasdair Gillies Memorial Challenge Overall Champion and Scholarship Winner for 2011
Malcolm Mackeller - Australia



(Each video on this page is a video playlist showing all of the prizewinners of in order. Click the "Next" button on the bottom toolbar to skip to the next video in the playlist.)

Best Video Background:
Kuno Zimmerman - Switzerland

Honorable Mentions:
Alan Wood - USA
John Bergen - Canada
Tom Hyatt - USA
Ally McKinnis - USA
Ben Gibbons - England


Best Dress and Deportment:
Nicholas Lundberg - USA
Carlo Musitelli - Italy


Best Quality Video:
Nicholas Lundberg - USA
Sean Borwick - USA


Thank you to everyone who participated -- the standard of playing for our competitions is incredibly strong and every piper should be proud of taking part in the event.  Special thanks to our international panel of world-class judges:

Michael Cusack - USA

Richard Hawke - New Zealand

Andrew P. Hayes - Canada

Stuart Liddell - Scotland

Iain MacDonald - Canada

Ian K. MacDonald - Canada

James MacHattie - Canada

Danielle Millar - Canada

Thanks again for your support of the BagpipeLessons.com Online Competition.