"Live from North Hero" CD

Review from The NSPSNA Journal

 

Showing Their Stuff:
The Pipers’ Gathering – Live from North Hero

This is a good CD. After 20 years of "Pipers’ Gatherings" held each August on the shores of Lake Champlain in North Hero, Vermont, we finally have an official recording of the highlights of some of the superb Saturday evening instructors’ concerts.

The annual event called North Hero Pipers’ Gathering brings together a diverse range of bagpipes – Northumbrian, Border, SSP, Uilleann, English and more – along with some of the world’s premier performers and teachers on these instruments. As those who have attended this unique event can attest, many of the performances at these concerts have been spectacular.

This 2004 recording, called The Pipers’ Gathering – Live from North Hero, captures a good sense of the music, diversity and fascination of these concerts. It contains highlights of the 2001, 2002 and 2003 concerts and provides a very enjoyable buffet of good piping of all kinds.

There is some brilliant fare here. Two tracks by Moebius, Jon Swayne’s trio of original music played on Jon’s pipes, are outstanding, showing particularly what kind of sound can be achieved with pipes when each drone and chanter is miked separately. Brian McNamara’s Uilleann piping is rhythmic and subtle, with great flow, technique and lots of sweet touches. Iain MacInnes’s smallpiping in D, though largely Highland in nature, shows a creativity in technique that all smallpipers would do well to study. Even Matt Seattle’s umpteenth recording of "Lindisfarne" shines, with Matt showing a level of original technique, tone and musicality not heard in some of his previous recordings. Deborah Quigley, Benedict Koehler, Kevin Rowsome, Fin Moore, Iain MacHarg and Patrick Hutchinson round out some of the other 19 tracks, all with very listenable material well played.

Our own instrument is represented by Andy May, Ian Lawther and Dick Hensold, and despite some technical imperfections, the Northumbrian smallpipes are well presented. Dick’s "Stool of Repentence," from the Dixon manuscript, is an exciting airing of one of the most brilliant pieces of music in this book. This performance on a D NSP is particularly inspiring when one recalls the frustrating shoulder problems Dick was battling at this time.

Ian Lawther, former UK native now residing in Maryland, plays Pigg’s "Keening in the Wind" and Clough’s "Holey Ha’penny" with verve and excitement, drawing a good response from the crowd. Ian has been a staple at recent gatherings, providing articulate and sensible teaching and creditable performances year after year. It would have been nice to see his and Andy May’s "Madame Bonaparte" duet of 2002 represented on this CD.

Speaking of Andy May, the yellow-haired laddie provides two cuts, both showing clearly the level of professionalism, easy technique and flowing music with which he has become associated. "Joan’s Jig," "Anne Frazer McKenzie" and "Shields Fair" cop track two, followed by a sparkling "Holey Ha’penny" on track seven. It’s too bad Andy’s off-the-wall and cheery banter couldn’t be captured on the CD as well as his music.

The CD is not without its flaws. A number of tracks start some bars into the performance, as though the recording engineer were asleep at the switch or off chasing a pint. And one would think that considering the wide array of pipes and performers that have been present over 20 years, the front cover might have shown more imagination than a shot of a young boy playing a set of half-deflated mouthblown Scottish smallpipes beside the lake.

However, the liner notes are excellent, giving the players, the pieces, their origins and the make of all the pipes.

You can get this CD from the Pipers’ Gathering website at www.pipersgathering.org, If you did, you’d enjoy it and support a fine committee doing fine work.

-Jim McGillivray

 

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