Urchfont 2011 Review

On Friday 30th April, 2011, all roads that didn’t lead to Westminster Abbey, seemed to lead pipers to Urchfont Manor in Wiltshire where, for the third year in a row, the SPSL was hosting its tuition weekend ‘in the country’. 30 pipers of all abilities signed up for the course, including two excellent players from America, Paula and Charlie Glendinning and a record appearance (for us) of five lady pipers.

The structure of this course has been developing over the last couple of years, to a point where, given suitable attendance, the foundation has been laid for tuition that should, over time, effect considerable improvements in the playing standard and the perception of the Great Highland Bagpipe in the South of England.

Four main classes were taught.

Andrew Wright (Double Gold medallist and Hon. President of the Piobaireachd Society) took the ceol mor group through a recap of the basics of Piobaireachd technique before leading them through the intricacies of three demanding pieces:  ‘Mary’s Praise’, ‘Glengarry’s March’ and ‘Lament for The Harp Tree’.

Steve Watterston (current competing piper) had the ceol beag group and, after working the fingers loose with his own sheet of warm-up exercises, recapped the tunes taught last year before challenging the students to tackle and play a competition March, Strathspey and Reel that none of them had attempted before, showing them how to approach such projects themselves, along the way.

The improvers were ably led by Andrew Frater (Amateur Player and solo-piping judge) and, in many ways, these were the lucky ones because, as well as exercising the fingerwork thoroughly, Andrew taught several beautiful, melodic tunes including the slow air ‘Mary MacKillop of Lochaber’, the retreat ‘Robert Runcie M.C. – Archbishop of Canterbury’ and the March ‘Colonel Charlie Workman’, all of which are compositions of the late P/M Angus MacDonald and deserve a place in any piper’s repertoire.  An introduction to ceol mor was also delivered with ‘Glengarry’s Lament’.

Tom Curd actually volunteered to take the beginner’s class.  Tom is a fine young local player who is currently a member of Inverary and District Juvenile band where he is improving his playing under the guidance of the redoubtable Stuart Liddell.  Tom has showed great drive in seeking out such tuition (he’ll learn about the volunteering, though….). Tom led the beginners through a well-crafted series of lessons that helped to demystify the reading of music and the tuning of the bagpipe, as well as assisting in untangling the fingers and it speaks volumes for Tom’s maturity and ability that the group interacted spontaneously with him and he held the attention of his audience all week-end.

Each of the above classes also had a session with Andrew Frater in his capacity as reed-maker and master sound-man during which they were shown how reeds were made, how to manipulate them once made (or bought) and how to use them to get the best out of their bagpipe.  At the end of these sessions everyone had comfortable bagpipes and excellent sound.

All work and no play makes for a lot of unhappy pipers so, to complement the classes, there were several fun events for the students to get involved in including a harmony group run by Callum Armstrong, who is studying Medieval Music and is himself a talented composer, and a composing competition with the Arthur Gurr award of £50 for the winning entry.

After dinner on the second evening everyone had some time to play his/her bagpipe before Andrew Wright kicked off the informal piping with a 40-minute recital that included the grounds of the ceol mor taught in the class and the whole of ‘Nameless – Hi hio tro tro’. Thereafter there was a steady stream of student performances interspersed with playing from the rest of the tutors which continued into the small hours and still further when the usual ‘jam session’ got underway in the library – smallpipes, whistles, piano, you name it.  Great musical fun was had until about 4 a.m. (I’m told….).

On the Sunday afternoon, we had a talk from Charlie Glendinning on how he approaches composition and he went on to tell us a bit about how he got his book of Pipe Tunes (The Glendinning Collection) into print.  This was well received and Charlie kindly offered to send everyone on the course, a copy of his book.

We had four strong entries for the Arthur Gurr award and, after a tough period of deliberation, the tutors awarded this year’s prize to Charlie Glendinning for a very musical 6/8 March  ‘The Bluebell Wood’, commemorating the 35-acre bluebell wood that is just a short walk from the Manor.  This will appear on the website in due course.

Finally, the harmony group delivered their performance of Callum’s composition to great acclaim.  This was recorded and it too will appear on the website.  Given that the pipers in this group had not seen the composition until Saturday and squeezed what little rehearsal they could in-between lessons and mealtimes, the performance was truly remarkable and brought another successful SPSL tuition weekend to a fitting close.

Interesting comment on one of the course critiques:

‘Probably an ambitious schedule packed into two-and-a-half-days but, all-in-all it was a glorious exhaustion…..’

I have already had several enquiries for next year……

Hugh Jamieson

SPSL President