Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim McGillivray
I'm often asked after a contest how I decide on first place, and my reply is usually, "the performance I like the most." It's not "the guy with the fewest things wrong."
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Thanks for that insight, it's very nice to hear that method, which I think would be hard for anybody to find fault with.
I will say that in over 40 years I've only once asked a judge why he placed competitors the way he did.
Back around 1980 Evan MacRae was judging open Piobaireachd at a very small contest, there were only two guys in that grade.
One guy's playing was lovely and musical. The other guy produced the most unmusical square mechanical metronome-like rendering imaginable.
To us in the "peanut gallery" it was clear who gave the most pleasing performance, but MacRae gave the prize to the mechanistic player. When I asked MacRae why he gave the prize to the piper he did, he said "I had to. He played it exactly the way it is in the book."