Canterbury Caledonian Society Pipe Band G3 and G4

Grade 4A
Musical Director: Liz Drury. A Grade soloist and piping tutor. Liz has a special affinity for teaching the young and the young at heart.
Leading Side: Maxwell Robertson: Young, up and coming leading side, First year at Uni of Canterbury.
Drum Major: Len Ineson: An experienced Drum Major who now lives in Tauranga but can’t give up his addiction to the Cale, so travels to take the Grade 4 at major events.

The Canterbury Caledonian Society has several activity groups under its guardianship. The Grade 4 Pipe Band is one of  3 of the bands under that umbrella.

The Grade 4 Band is made up of many youthful participants, just starting out in their pipe band careers and those who prefer to stay within the band movement without the pressure of competing at a higher level
Players are mentored up through the bands in order to help them reach their potential.  We also have a number of members who play for the enjoyment rather than the full competitiveness – these players also mentor and tutor the younger players, this gives us our future in keeping the Pipe Band movement strong.

Grade 3
Musical Director: Harrison Allen; An accomplished solo and band piper, Harrison is a leading example of the mentoring system: having started as a young lad in Grade 4 and progressed up thru the grades to Grade 1 before accepting the position to lead Grade 3 this season.
Leading Side: Bruce Fraser: An experienced drummer with a passion for taking drums apart and putting them back together.  Bruce is well known for taking note of any small mishap and noting it down for further reference at a later date.
Drum Major: Matthew Croft; an up and coming young Drum Major Matthew is a key member of the pipe corps as well.
The Canterbury Caledonian Society has several activity groups under its guardianship. The Grade 3 Pipe Band is one of  3 of the bands under that umbrella.

The Grade 3 band is made up of a group of young enthusiastic members with a few old heads thrown in to keep the balance. They are 100% home grown, all from within the Canterbury region.  They actively take part in the mentoring both drummer and pipers from the Grade 4 and Juvenile to improve their skill levels in order  to move up through the bands and to help them reach their potential.

Juvenile Pipe Band
Pipe Major: Madisyn Braithwaite. A promising piper with a bright future, Madisyn is Year 12 at Burnside High School
Leading Side: Maxwell Robertson. Young, up and coming leading side, First year at Uni of Canterbury.
Tutors: Harrison Allan, Alex McNeil

The Juvenile Pipe band is not actually a band in its own right but is made up of players from all 3 of the Society’s Pipe Bands that fall within the age group required for a Juvenile Band and a few members from other Bands within the Canterbury Centre.
Most of the members come from the Grade 4 band simply because by the time players get to the higher Grade bands they are usually outside the age requirements.

The band is tutored and guided by the younger members of the other Bands whom have previously come up thru the Juvenile Band, the members are all from within the Canterbury region.

All the Bands practice at the Caledonian Hall at 5 Michelle Road in Wigram, Christchurch. It is an amazing place and is actually a converted Cool Store, and has amazing acoustics. It was built to replace the old Cale Hall that was destroyed completely in the Feb 22 earthquake in 2011.
It has a stage to host all the Society’s dancing competitions, equipment storage, practice rooms, and a Kitchen. It has over the last couple of years hosted everything from weddings and Debutant Balls to Model toy event and Hula Dancing lessons.