The December Gathering this year was a low-key affair, drilling down into tunes and prepping performance material for our members for the coming season.
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| Angus running the Set Tunes Club. |
The afternoon kicked off with a walk-through of two tunes from the Bloomington Pipers’ Society’s set tunes – the aire “Skye Boat Song” and the jig “Oft in a Stilly Night”. These two pieces are bite-sized tunes which are fun to play and were the first tunes featured in our monthly Set Tunes Club because they are great for pulling out at performances. The Set Tunes are meant to give Society members and other pipers in the area a common set of tunes to perform together, regardless of if they’re in different bands, or no bands at all.
After running through the tunes, the pipers present took out their pipes to give the instruments a go. Chris Eller took up his pipes to do a test run of his 2018 solo competition 2/4 March, “Captain Norman Orr Ewing”. After a bit of tuning on “Skye Boat Song”, he did an initial run on the tune. After the first run he played it again. Chris’ pipes had a good powerful sound, and his the pipes were well tuned.
Chanter student Wolfe took up the stage next to perform his piece for competition, the 2/4 March “Teribus”. Wolfe performed this piece at the Bloomington Bagpipe Recital on November 28, and it continues to come together. Wolfe is the first practice chanter student to have performed solo at a BPS meeting.
Society president Angus Martin pulled out his pipes to set up a reed in one of his solo chanters. After fiddling with a reed, and an aggressive amount of attention on the high-G, Angus got the chanter set decently. He then performed two of his three 2018 competition 2/4 Marches back to back – first “Millbank Cottage”, followed by “The Knightswood Celeidh”. Going into part 3 of Millbank Cottage Angus had a bit of a memory bauble, but got back on and finished the tunes.
Next month we will be holding the second session of the Set Tunes Club, tackling the jig “Rocking the Baby” and the 4/4 March “Dawning of the Day”. Set Tunes Club will go from 4:00pm to 5:00pm, followed by the January Gathering proper, from 5:00pm to 6:00pm. Details about the gathering program will be coming in the next week or so. Bound 2018 Set Tune volumes will be available for Society members, and registration forms will be available for those interested in becoming a member.
bloomingtonpipers.org 