Piper's Gathering 2009

After driving back to New York from the Vermont Bellows Pipe School, and then up to Maine for a few days, and back down to Massachusetts and then back up to Vermont, I finally arrived at the Piper's Gathering on Friday evening, rather on time.

I'd had mixed feelings about attending this year's PG, as I didn't make any sales at PG 2008. But I'd signed up because my friend Ellen  would be teaching smallpipes. However, I was quite excited when I arrived having recently heard that Ellen was dragging down Ward, of Prince Edward Island, to play piano for her and that Tim Cummings of Vermont would be attending as a vendor. I could feel an unclosed circle closing.

Ward and Ellen were, or course, the two friends who have been coming down to teach at the Smallpipes and Fiddle workshops I have helped run in Maine twice a year for the past four years. It's a lovely time for Smallpipers and fiddlers, please feel free to email me about it. The next weekend will be at the beginning of November.

I got to know Tim Cummings through the Vermont Bellows Pipe School 2008 and 2009 and while working on his custom set of Plum and Antler Smallpipes. Tim runs a small Tunebook Publishing House in Moncton, VT called Beithe Publishing that puts out lovely tunebooks of "innovative reportoire for Scottish Pipes". He recently published a new book of tunes that includes one tune by myself, and a couple tunes by Ward called "An Ift of Efts". (Check it out!) Tim had met Ward at a Vermont folk event, and Ellen through some other obscure way (possibly when he was teaching at the College of Piping in PEI.) But we had not yet all been together in one place. It's a fun and rare thing for a group of friends who all know each other to get together for the first time all in one place. It's a little like magic.

Despite not having time to just play tunes together, I had a great time with everyone. And it was great to see and hear Ellen, Ward and Tim play one of Ward's G compositions, "the Ballerina" (found in "An Ift of Efts") at the concert on Sunday Night.

Another bonus of the weekend was finally getting to meet EJ Jones. EJ is a great piper, pipemaker, and now I know, also a great guy. I've long admired his work and have hoped we could meet and bemoan the troubles and trials of being a little pipe maker in a land of big companies like MacCallum. EJ was even more friendly than I could have hoped. You can see EJ playing some tunes with Tim below.

I even did a fair amount of business throughout the weekend and have had to up my wait list to 10 months (1 year wait here I come!). Thanks to everyone that runs the PG. It is a huge event that certainly doesn't run itself.

Ryan MacDonald Photoshoot

So while I was at the Vermont Bellows Pipe School two weeks ago, Ryan MacDonald asked if she could snap a few shots of me to possibly use in her critically acclaimed Pipes|Drums Series "Photographing the Art". Above is one of the shots from that session. And check out other notable subjects on her website such as Vermont based Piper and Tunebook creator extraordinaire Tim Cummings (with his Banton Plum and Antler Smallpipes) and the always in tune Fin Moore.

Vermont Bellows Pipe School

There are few things that I look forward to more than the week spent Smallpiping, Border Piping and camping at Matt Buckley's home in Richmond, Vermont. And this year's week was no disappointment. Imagine a beautiful old house, your tent staked outside under gnarly old Apple trees (the sound of the river the best lullaby), two most gracious and patient hosts, and two most gracious and patient piping teachers, Fin Moore of Scotland and Ryan MacDonald, originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, teaching you 25 of the best tunes you've ever dreamed of hearing. That's the Vermont Bellows Pipe School.

Strangely, the week is at once the most relaxed and the most intense week of the year for me. Work is, mostly, forgotten (what's a lathe?). But the tunes! I thought they'd never stop.

At 9:00am, more or less on the dot, the teaching starts and somewhere around 4pm it stops (with a mad rush into town for lunch in the middle). Things are low key until dinner (communal) and after the always delicious meal a session eventually comes together with sleep happening somewhere between midnight and six in the morning. Rinse and repeat until friday.

Notable non-piping (strictly speaking) events of this week were the beer bottle bagpipe choir (you had to be there) and the Mabou Square set I danced with Ryan, Fin and Sarah at three in the morning with Fin as my dance partner.

Once again I took almost no pictures at Matt's (too busy being relaxed and/or frazzled by tunes). But maybe it's for the best. If you want to see what it's like you'll just have to attend yourself.

Jerry Holland dies at age 54

CBC news Article

What can I say? He was the greatest Cape Breton fiddler and Composer of his time. And we've lost him way too young.

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.