It is not often you get to hear two superb, vintage sets of pipes in the one day. The first was John MacDonald, Inverness’s played by Duncan MacGillivray and the second, Bob Brown’s played by Dan Nevans. Neither disappointed.
The occasion was the annual conference of the Piobaireachd Society held last weekend in the Royal George Hotel, Perth.
Society committees met on the Friday night. The General Committee approved grants of almost £13,000 for various competitions and workshops around the world. The Music Committee finalised the set tunes for next year, then it was off to a local restaurant where we were joined by other friends and colleagues.
By Robert Wallace, President
Come Saturday, over thirty delegates and visitors heard a succession of well presented papers. Duncan helped illustrate mine on John Shone’s new book on John Macdonald. Dan’s Ronald MacDonald of Morar was central to Peter McCalister’s discourse on memorising tunes.
But there were lots of other good sets of pipes on show. At the pre-dinner ceilidh there was surely no finer drone than Dr Bill Wotherspoon’s, nor a warmer sounding instrument than Jack Taylor’s. And what about Hector Munro’s in his Blind Piper?
I totted up the live tunes we heard over the weekend. Here they are, roughly in the order that they were played: Company’s Lament, Tulloch Ard, King’s Taxes, Ronald MacDonald of Morar, Fairy Flag, Duke of Atholl’s Salute, Blind Piper, Old Men of the Shells, Marquis of Argyll, The River Flows Down to the Sea (J Pincet), Scotland My Home Forever (Karen McCrindle Warren, and played by the composer), Too Long in this Condition (D MacDonald), Big Spree, Prince’s Salute, Lachlan MacNeill Campbell, Chisholm’s Salute.
You can add to that the taped excerpts in my own talk and in Jack Taylor’s on gems from the Society archives. (Andrew Wright’s Sister’s Lament was unsurpassed on the day for controlled phrasing and touch.)
So you can see the PS conf. is not consumed with endless chatter from a bunch of dusty old men wittering on about the good old days, though after a few drams there was a little of that too.
We had many visitors up for the day, Logan Tannock and Robert Barnes were two. How pleasing to see Barney looking so well.
As well as the J Macdonald pipe, Duncan MacGillivray brought with him the piobaireachd trophy from Invergordon Games, sadly now defunct. The names on it date back to the early 20th century with Calum Piobair’s son Jockan prominent. Duncan has custody of this piece of piping history should this games ever revive.
A highlight for many was Decker Forrest’s paper on the numerous piping links on the island of Skye, in particular with the MacCrimmons, and the MacArthurs. He told the story of a certain Robertson, a pupil of the Rankin’s on Mull, who had the audacity to challenge MacCrimmon for supremacy in the art.
They faced up at the Fairy Bridge and after a dead heat were ordered to play again, MacCrimmon narrowly prevailing. You can still travel to the bridge today – and perhaps have a tune there on your way back from the cairn at Borreraig.
Decker pointed out a number of caves used by pipers in bygone days. He had even played in one himself and was amazed at the close, confined sound. He had expected overwhelming reverberation from the rock walls.
This talk capped a fascinating day of music. Thereafter it was into the glad rags for dinner. Piped in by Fraser Hamilton, Liam Nicolson and Kyle Cameron we had a feast to please the most picky trencherman.
We stood for the loyal toast and then these three outstanding young players entertained us with a set each. But the day was not yet done. Into the lounge, and out came Jack’s fiddle, Peter’s smallpipes, Duncan’s whistle, with tunes interspersing songs in Gaelic and Polish.
- Read more on the Piobaireachd Society website. Members will be able to read the Conference Proceedings in due course with special thanks to Charles Finney for his recordings.
