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When I was 12 years old, my parents took me to the old Uline Arena in an area of Washington, D.C. that now looks like the streets of Srebrenica-post ethnic cleansing. Sol Hurok had brought the Royal Marines and the Highland Fusiliers to town. I sat in slack-jawed awe in the spotlit darkness of that arena and watched commandos rappel from the ceiling, James Bond's Aston Martin firing blanks from the front grille while doing donuts in the center of the arena and the pomp and flash of Her Majesty's Own Royal Marine brass band. As the band retreated, on the opposite side of the arena came a crushed and rushing sound like the first stirrings of some magnificent machine that had failed to come to life at the first pull of the rope. Out of the black of the tunnel and into the spotlights came this slow-moving, glittering, spat-clad machine. What a machine! It hummed like a machine. It had whirring and twirling things like a machine and like the first glimpse of a Stanley Steamer making a pass down Main Street, it commanded reverential awe at the creative genius that gave birth to such an object. The near mystical experience of hearing those pipes all the way home in the car sealed my fate. I was a slave to the music. Years went by and on my 14th birthday, my mother gave me a Lawrie chanter that she bought at Scotland House in Alexandria for about 25 dollars. With it came Logan's tutor whose tutoring, alas, remained locked to me for a good many more years. (O, "round and distinct movement," would I ever plumb the depths of your mysteries? Would I ever come to love the tuneless enigma of "Cha til MacCrumein?") In the fall of the year I turned seventeen, we formed the Annapolis Pipe Band and met for group lessons on an eighteenth century farm owned by Walt and Flo Landmesser. My first teacher was Gerald MacNeish, Pipe Major of the MacKenzie-Scott Pipe Band in Baltimore. If there were shows to display the peoples of the world, Gerry would have won best of breed in the Scottish division. Broad-featured, ruddy-faced, soft- spoken, he commanded respect merely by the aura of his history. He was a piper. We wanted to be like him. On Saturdays in winter I would come early to stoke the fire in the pot-bellied stove in what used to be the tack room. This was the piper's hut, and it was my job to heat it without burning it down. We used coal, and the smoke gave the whole farm that warm brown smell of a reekin' peat fire. I couldn't understand how I could be nostalgic about a place I'd never been to before, but all the things that contributed to the atmosphere of that place further deepened a love for the Scottish culture and its music. There are moments of epiphany in a person's life that give him a vision of something higher--that cause him to raise his standards. One of those moments was when the Invergordon Distillery cut their first and only record. I remember lying on my bed in college and listening to it on headphones every night until I wore the groove completely away. This was a milestone in pipe band history. Another moment for the Annapolis Pipe Band was when we asked Sandy Jones to be the tutor. I began to learn that good tone was more important than how white your spats were. I remember Sandy prodding us to compete, and at Peary High School in 1970, I walked up to collect the first piping prize I had ever won. It was at that same competition that I heard a young piper perform a set of jigs and had no idea that any human being could play that fast, that clean. The piper was Tim Carey. I floated for a year then finally called Sandy about a band he was resurrecting in Rockville called Denny & Dunipace. He invited me out to meet the band and when I met Paula, I experienced another epiphany. "I think this is going to be O.K. for me." Paula was like the tap in a maple tree for me. I started writing tunes-- albeit sappy at first but, with time and a discerning ear, some quality began to flow. By the time "Honey in the Bag" was being claimed by persons other than the composer, "Moonstar," which I had written for Paula for our wedding, was selected as the opening tune for the Denny & Dunipace medley for 1975. It began being played in Scotland and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards orchestrated it for their combined brass and pipe band march-past and recorded it--having attributed it to the name of 'Gillies,' who has yet to show himself. They were apprised of their error. In 1985, the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band used it as their march-on tune and somone said recently that they heard Zamfir doing an arrangement for pan pipes on TV late one night for one of his collections...but that is an unfounded rumor. Other tunes include:
Kit's Reel and The Brigantine Boys were the crowning tunes of the 1996 City of Washington medley. Also be watching in the not-too-distant future for my first collection of tunes -- painstakingly and with much care and devotion being typeset note by note by Paula. We are using Finale, a composition software that, in my opinion, is the most beautiful and readable. Accompanying the tunes will be photographs and stories about why the tunes were written.
Editor's Addition... E-mail Charlie Glendinning --> cglendin@aft.org <-- Back to CoW Members |