In September this year we received the following letter from former LBPS committee member Lindsay Davidson. He included what must be a first for Common Stock, an arrangement for smallpipes of music by Bach.

“I was a member of LBPS far back in the 1990s and indeed a committee member back then. I left Scotland about 20 years ago and have only now renewed my membership.
I have been active during all those years, touring the world playing concerts with my wife on harp and with orchestras from, and in, places such as Japan and Ukraine to name a couple. I have been composing the music I need for harp, orchestral and other types of line-ups (with pipes), and included borderpipes in my PhD thesis. I have also composed a double concerto for bellows blown pipes and harp and orchestra, as well as two borderpipe concertos for solo borderpipes and orchestra, and have put a section on smallpipes (and lots of tough exercises on my teachyourselfbagpipes.co.uk website.
Not so long ago I came across Donald Lindsay's extended range chanter and have got one on order. I am aware that Julian has a design as well and am very excited to see this  development.
Whilst waiting for my new chanter to arrive, I have been looking for repertoire and for ideas as to how to provoke myself and other pipers into developing the technical comfort to be able to make proper use of the possibilities this initiative brings. I figured that making some transcriptions would be a good way to build a repertoire of things for us to play with the extended range and help open up new audiences, without taking away from the character and significance of the traditional repertoire. I attach one such arrangement, of Bach's "Air on the G string" with the hopes you may consider including it in Common Stock.”

A little research by your editor uncovered two articles by Lindsay from 1992 and 1993 including his compositions of ‘Sonatas for Smallpipes’, which he had introduced at the 1991 Collogue. These are available in the Common Stock Archive online; December 1992 and June 1993.

Rosanna and Jock Agnew at the LBPS competition, 1999 (probably not playing Bach)