city of nordhorn pipes and drums

Our band, City of Nordhorn Pipes & Drums eV, was founded in 2005 on the initiative of Ralf Pfestorf and Ralf Deppe. The first rehearsals took place in May 2005 with a total of 11 people. (See press article from March 13, 2005) Since July 2006, our band has also had the suffix “eV” (registered association), with certified non-profit status.

In the middle of 2006, the first smaller, thoroughly successful performances followed. Unfortunately, at the end of 2006, several members left the association. In January 2007 the rebuilding of the band started with 5 (!) people. In 2009, several performances were performed again, and the number of members has increased to around 22 active musicians to date.

Our dress

Our band wears the Black Watch ( Royal Highland Regiment ) tartan. The photos below show the Black Watch tartan and the Royal Highland Regiment Black Watch logo. We usually do our performances in “Day Dress”, consisting of a black Argyll jacket, waistcoat, white shirt and of course the traditional kilt with the tartan of the Black Watch.

Our band members

Our band members, all hobby musicians, come from the Nordhorn area, North Rhine-Westphalia and the neighboring Netherlands. ( Radius approx. 60 km ) The band usually meets every Sunday for a morning rehearsal. Since 2005 we have been able to use rooms in the Nordhorn vocational school for this purpose. The training of our members is carried out internally to a large extent, supplemented by weekend or week workshops such as the BAG summer school in Breuberg, which are led by trainers from Scotland and the USA.

The appearances

The venues of our band are mainly distributed over the entire north German area, the Netherlands, Westphalia to the Rhineland. The type of appearances extends mainly to, for example, Highland Games, tattoos, rifle festivals, city festivals, parades, company events. Even smaller serenades for birthdays or weddings are part of the daily band routine. Of course you can also book our band for your event. You can choose from three possible combinations here. You can find more information about bookings here .

The philosophy

our group is actually very simple, our music should primarily be fun and enjoyable for our listeners and of course for ourselves. We are a pure “performance band” and not a competition band. For this reason, in addition to the traditional Scottish marches, we also play many pieces of music that are more familiar to German ears. The maintenance of our band, which is quite expensive, is financed exclusively by recorded performance fees and donations.