Blue Mahoe

A special order set of Border Pipes has been added to the gallery page of my website:

Gallery

The wood is Blue Mahoe, the national tree of Jamaica. It's a very interesting wood, and made a lovely sounding set of border pipes. The coloring is very strange. As the pictures show, depending on the light, the set can look, blue, purple, brown, or very light gray.

The customer who special ordered them had seen a set of pipes made from them in Europe somewhere (he's from Germany), and asked if I could make a set from the wood. I tracked some down from:

Tropic Ventures Rainforest Enrichment and Sustainable Forestry Project.

"Tropic ventures . . . is located on 1000 acres of spectacular rainforest land in the southern central highlands of Patillas, Puerto Rico. The project's mission is to research and demonstrate the economic use of rain forest land using methods that do not destroy the forest ecology."

A fun group to work with. The woman I corresponded with calls herself "3T".

I enjoyed working with the wood, which had a slightly sweet/spicy smell when turned. They're mounted with Water Buffalo.

Noteflight

I just discovered this site and I think it's going to be huge.

Noteflight

I wrote out a tune and I'm going to embed it below. It's a six part tune called Willie Cummings that I've been meaning to learn. I wrote it out in Sibelius the other day. And just wrote it out on Noteflight:



Cool right? The non-embeded version looks much better:

Wille Cummings

I think this website is going to be pretty darn big.

Andrea Beaton and Troy MacGillivray

A couple weeks ago I attended the NYC Barndance. Anyone in New York interested in the various cultures of the US and Canada that dance to Jigs and Reels (or similar) should check out the Barndance. This could include Quebecois music and dance, or old-time from Virginia. And lucky for me, it sometimes means the music and dance of Cape Breton Island.

What's interesting about the NYC Barndance is that it's essentially just a Contradance. But Dave Harvey, who runs it, gets musicians from all over to come down to Manhattan and play us their style of music. While most of the dances done are New England style Contradances, two or three times a night, the dances will be appropriate to the visiting culture.

So, on June 11th, Andrea Beaton and Troy MacGillivray graced the small hamlet of Manhattan to drive some lively Cape Breton tunes for us. I've been contradancing for years, so I had fun with those. But it was especially nice when we twice ran through the Mabou Square set.

After the dance was over I had a nice chat with both Andrea and Troy. Like everyone else from Cape Breton, they were very friendly and welcoming. I told them I recently started playing the fiddle, and Andrea confessed she recently started in on the practice chanter!

I hope Andrea and Troy make it down again soon to NYC. New York may be one of the most culturally diverse places in the US, but it's pretty much completely devoid of anything to do with the Maritimes of Cananda.