User:Ostrichyearning2/vp

The Victoria Police Pipe Band was a pipe band based in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1936, the band

After a decade near the top of pipe band competition, the band won the World Pipe Band Championships in 1998.

After a controversial decision in 2000 to reshape it, the band ceased to compete, and it was disbanded in 2014.

The band has also released a number of recordings, which are internationally popular.

History
The band was started in 1936 by a group of full-time police officers, and Mr W.E. McPherson donated £150 for instruments and uniforms. In appreciation the band wore the Macpherson tartan. For some fifty years following this, there is little noted in the history of the band and it is assumed that it continued on much in the way it had, filling its ranks with police who performed part-time.

In 1987, the band recruited Pipe Major Nat Russell from the Royal Ulster Constabulary Pipe Band of Northern Ireland and received funding from the state government, with which it competed in Grade Two Australian competitions. One year later, the band attained the title of Australian Grade Two Champions and achieved third place in the August World Pipe Band Championships for the same grade. This earned the band's regrading to Grade One.

Buoyed by its success, Victoria Police Pipe Band spent the next decade dominating Australian competition, claiming six consecutive grade one titles locally whilst continuing to compete internationally. In 1992, 1994 and 1997 the band claimed third places at the Worlds, this time in Grade One.

After some minor adjustments by then Drum Sergeant Harold Gillespie and Pipe Major Nat Russell, the Victoria Police Pipe Band was crowned World Champions at Glasgow in 1998.

In October 2000, the band's competing days were over as it reformed, and ceased to have support for travelling to Scotland compete.

Nat Russell was awarded the Order of Australia in 2007 for "service to pipe band music as a Pipe-Major, teacher and adjudicator."

In 2014 the band ceased to exist altogether.

Impact
The band under Nat Russel revolutionised pipe band tuning, being among the first bands to use electronic tuners.

Mark Saul and Murray Blair were both members of the band, and wrote many tunes.

Recordings
During the course of their years as a competition pipe band, the band released a number of recordings which included:
 * Uphold the Right (1991)
 * Live in Concert in Ireland (1993)
 * Live in the Rockies (1996)
 * Master Blasters (1998)
 * The MasterBlasters Concert, Live in Motherwell
 * World Pipe Band Championships (1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998)

The band has also been featured on the following recordings:
 * A Celebration in Music and Song (2003)
 * Decade of World Champions 1990-1999 (2000)
 * Great Highland Bagpipe Collection - March, Strathspey, Reel (1999)
 * Pipes 'N Things (2003)
 * Piping Up (2000)
 * Scottish Gold - In the Piping Tradition (1995)
 * Scottish Collection - The Pipes and Drums (1999)