The 78th Fraser Highlanders Pipe Band, is a pipe band from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 78th Frasers became the first non-Scottish band to win the World Pipe Band Championships, in the summer of 1987. In 2007, the Drum Corps led by Drew Duthart captured the Best Drum Corps Prize and the Best Bass Section award at the World Pipe Band Championships at Glasgow Green in Scotland.
Under the direction of Pipe Major Doug MacRae, the band is still active in the competitive pipe band arena to this day. The band has won both the North American Pipe Band Championships (held in Maxville, Ontario) and the Canadian Pipe Band Championships (held in Cambridge, Ontario) a total of twelve times each. The Frasers travel to Scotland each summer to compete at the World's, and have finished in the prize list eleven times.
In addition to their competitive activities, the band has always had a mandate and goal to expand the pipe band idiom and to introduce new musical concepts into the genre through their recordings and concerts. Their recording Live In Ireland (1987) is regarded by some as the quintessential modern pipe band recording.
Their recordings include:
- 78th Fraser Highlanders (Faces album) (1983)
- Up to the Line (1985)
- Live In Ireland (1987)
- The Immigrant's Suite (1989)
- Live in Canada - The Megantic Outlaw Concert (1991)
- Live in Scotland (1993)
- Flame of Wrath (1998)
- Cascade (2003)
Famous quotes containing the words pipe and/or band:
“On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me,
“Pipe a song about a Lamb”;
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper pipe that song again”—
So I piped, he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear”;
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.”
—Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1783–1835)