Happy New Year!!
Well, another year is upon us and The Delta Police Pipe Band is looking back on a very successful 2009, a year that was one of the busiest in the Band's history. The band had two very successful Burns nights in January, a great spring concert with Mark Donnelley, the Whiskey Dicks and the Eire Borne Dancers and our usual slate of community parades and shows around the lower mainland in the first half of the year. In July, the band went of to Switzerland for two weeks to play at the Basel Tattoo and also went to Ilzach, France for a performance. As usual, lots of good friends were made and we hope to cross paths again in the near future with our new Swiss friends as well as the other bands from the UK, Australia and New Zealand that we met along the way.
Once we got back to Canada in August the band played many events around the Lower Mainland and also took our annual trip to Victoria to play at Government House for the Police Honors Night. On the social side, the band had very succesful alumni Scotch Tasting on October. A slide show of old alumni photographs that was shown at the event can be seen by clicking here. It was fantastic to see so many of the retired members out swapping stories from the early days of the band! We now turn our attention to 2010 and in particular the two Robert Burns Dinners coming up on January 22 and 23rd. Both nights are now sold out and we thank everyone for their support. We look forward to seeing you in our travels in 2010! Basel Tattoo Opens!
The Basel Military Tattoo 2009 opened with a bang on Saturday night. The band played in the tattoo parade on Saturday morning, marching through the streets of old Basel to a huge crowd of over 120,000. The band then played one final dress rehearsal before opening the tattoo with a 9pm show. The cast received a standing ovation and it was a great experience for all the band members. We now play 10 more shows over the next week and are looking forward to it! Every show is sold out and the total audience will be wll over 100,000. The show has pipes and drums, military bands, bands on horseback, and the Top Secret Drum Corps from Basel. The whole production is very well organized (it runs like a Swiss watch!) and the band is very impressed with the whole experience.
Below is a video of the band marching in the parade. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te_7qooSWKc Two pictures are below. The first one is of the band marching over the Rhine river in formation with the Temuka Pipe Band from New Zealand and the Royal Highland Fusiliers from Scotland. The DPPB is in the middle two ranks. The second is the tattoo perfomance with the band in a Swiss cross formation. The DPPB is in the front and right of the outside of the formation. More details to follow over the next few days!   DPPB Performs in France
14th July, Bastille Day, is celebrated throughout France in much the manner of Canada Day combined with Ladner May Days. A national holiday, it brings the French together to watch parades, musical entertainment and generally indulge in national fervour.
The town of Illzach, in the Alsace region of France, is no exception, though this year, for the first time, they were entertained in a very different way. The Delta Police Pipe Band arrived in Basel, just 40 km away, on the 13th, and slept our jetlag away. Then, together with the British Royal Artillery Brass Band, the New Zealand Temuka Pipe Band, and the South Australia Pipe Band, they were spirited up the freeway to Illzach and the town’s stadium. The combined and individual performances from the bands were enthusiastically received by a crowd of over ten thousand, packed shoulder to shoulder under increasingly threatening skies. Our Highland Dancers were as popular a feature there as they are in Delta and the rousing rendition of our audience favourites, Scotland the Brave and Black Bear was met with thunderous applause. As the combined Bands marched off the stage, the heavens opened and a downpour soaked everyone. This did nothing to dampen the appreciation of the citizens of Illzach. The Band now faces two days of intense rehearsal as part of the 200 pipers and drummers who form the massed pipe bands in the Tattoo. With many other military brass bands and feature acts, the event is intricate and organized down to the last second with true Swiss precision. A full Dress rehearsal on Friday, 17th, to an invited audience, will set the stage for the eleven concerts the Band will participate in over the eight days of the Tattoo. At each concert, they will be performing to a sellout crowd, the Basel Tattoo being the largest European Military Tattoo after the famed Edinburgh Tattoo in Scotland. On the afternoon of Saturday 18th. the Band will march in a parade through the streets of Basel and perform at the International Pipefest, a separate gathering celebrating the bagpipes as an art form and involving pipers and bands from Europe, US, Australia, Scotland, Poland, celebrating every form of bagpipe that exists. The Band thanks all our supporters for their ongoing support of the band and we are all very proud to represent D\elta, British Columbia and Canada when we go abroad. Some pictures from the show in Ilazach are below - further updates to come as the Tattoo opens!!   A great Celtic Fest 2009 and preparation for the Basel Tattoo
The Delta Police Pipe Band held our annual Concert on May 9, 2009 - once again at the South Delta Baptist Church. The show featured the Pipe Band along with Tenor Mark Donnelly, The Whiskey Dicks, and the Eire Born Irish Dancers. Mark is well known for his performances with the Vancouver Opera and for his rousing version of 'O Canada' before the Vancouver Canucks games. It was a bit of a fire drill getting Mark to the concert on time as the Canucks had game 5 of their playoff series at 7:30pm......the same time as the start of our concert! Mark managed to perform live on Hockey Night in Canada at GM Place and then raced out to Tsawwassen to perform at our show. Mark and his son Sean put on a great show. The Whiskey Dicks are a group of amazingly talented guys and their style was a bit of a departure from some of our previous shows, but it was really well received. They are a high energy group who play in a variety of styles and pulled out a Celtic flavour for their numbers on May 9th. Pat Ernst, who plays fiddle for the Whiskey Dicks, has played at our Burns Night before and it was great to see Pat, Ryan, Mike, and Curt do their thing for our crowd. The Eire Born Dancers performed along with Juno Award Winning Fiddler Shona LaMottee and as usual brough the house down. It was a great night. Pictures and sound files are available here . A review of the concert was published in the Delta Optimist, and can be viewed here . Many thanks to all who attended!
The band is now well into preperations for the Basel Military Tattoo in Basel, Switzerland this summer. The band leaves on July 12th and starts preparations for the tattoo that week with the actual shows beginning July 18th. The band is also going to a small town in France on July 14th to play for Bastille Day celebrations, the French National Holiday. There is lots of new music to learn and practices will be intense for the next 7 weeks. Everyone in the band is looking forward to the trip and will be working hard to put on the great show the Band has become known for. Before we go we hope to see some of you at the Ladner May Days, North Delta Parade, Canada Day in Steveston and at Kirkland House, and at other events around the area! Two Succesful Burns Suppers
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