SFU's award-winning pipe band, led by pipe major and Coquitlam resident Terry Lee, will be in Glasgow next week to compete in the world championships.
And the elite band, which last year placed second, will be joined by two of its youth pipe bands - a debut for one of the groups and a first appearance in three years for the other.
Some 60 young musicians from the Grade 3 and 4 junior Robert Malcolm Memorial (RMM) bands - including many from the Tri-Cities - will play along with the 44-member Grade 1 band at the Aug. 11 contest.
The Grade 4 band has never competed at the Worlds; it will be entered in the novice-juvenile category. The Grade 3 band, however, last performed in Scotland in 2009 and placed fourth. This time around, the band that includes Coquitlam's Connor Watt will be moved up to the Grade 3A class.
Lee founded the Grade 1 pipe band 31 years ago with his brother Jack, the band's pipe sergeant and pipe major for the Grade 4s.
"All of our bands are working hard this year and aiming high for wins at the Worlds," Jack Lee said in a news release. "We [Grade 1] finished second last year and we would love to do a little better than that this year. The competition is extremely tough but we are right in the thick of the action."
The RMM band is named after two members of the SFU Pipe Band, Robert Barbulak and Malcolm Bokenfohr, who were killed in a car accident in 1993.
