I have the sad duty to advise that New Zealand has lost one of it's
Northumbrian piping pioneers.
In his late 70s, John Miller, of Rotorua, passed away today after suffering from pneumonia for the last couple of months.
John learnt the smallpipes from George Armstrong in Hexham when he was a teenager and these are the pipes he brought to NZ in 1948. After that set was destroyed in a fire, he managed to locate and reconstruct an early Batey set that had been in NZ since 1880. He taught himself the art of reed making, after growing his own Spanish cane when he was working at the NZ Forest Research Institute.
About 20 years ago John obtained an 18 keyed set of smallpipes from David Burleigh and later Hamish Moore made him a set of half-longs which were his pride and joy. Over the years John has entered (and sometimes won) the overseas class of the NSP competitions, both smallpipes and half-longs.
Although we didn't have a chance to hear him very often, John has
entertained many people around the North Island, playing in several ceilidh groups including the Mosstroopers for about 12 years and more recently, in a group named Gaulstones.
When the Piper's Millenium Tour passed through Rotorua in 2001, we collected John and took him with us to Tauranga for the day.
John's health had been fragile since late 1997, tho' his wife, Freyja's nursing helped him recover. Sadly, Freyja died suddenly in February last year and John has been on his own since then.
We will miss him terribly; John was the only other piper on this side of the world when I first started in 1972 and I was hoping that he would be on the piping tour with us next year.
John's funeral will be held on Tuesday and Helen Capes will be playing her pipes in his honour.

Robyn