With his
victory at the George Sherriff Invitational Amateur Solo
Piping Competition in Hamilton, Ontario in November, 2001, Hector
Macquarrie of Halifax, Nova Scotia was suddenly catapulted into
the piping limelight. Those of us who knew this young man, and
knew his family, were not surprised; we were already aware of his
exceptional talent and his amazing dedication to the music which
has been played by pipers in his family for at least eleven
generations.
Angus
Hector Macquarrie was born on February 14th, 1985 to Angus M. (Marcie) and
Cabrini (MacIsaac) Macquarrie of Halifax, but both with family roots
firmly planted in Antigonish County soil. A piper in his own right, Marcie
is the founder and publisher of the Celtic Heritage magazine. He is also a
partner with one of his brothers in Precision Concrete, of Halifax.
Cabrini, a school teacher, also comes from a very musical family. “Mom’s
brother Hector is an amazing singer,” says his piper namesake. “There is
always music when the family gets together.”
Two of
Hector’s sisters are Highland dancers and all three of them are pianists.
One of them is also learning to play the fiddle. Hector himself plays
piano, guitar, and a drum kit, but the bagpipe is his principle musical
instrument. He was an avid hockey player, having started skating at age
three. “I played Triple A all through the age categories,” says Hector,
“and I played on Provincial teams from Novice through to Pee Wee. We went
to tournaments in Boston, Quebec, and throughout the Maritimes playing
against other Provincial teams from across the country. Once I took a year
off from the pipe band because of hockey.” Last year, though, Hector
refocused his priorities and chose to sacrifice hockey to concentrate on
his piping.
Hector
took his first piping lesson at age ten from Ian MacIsaac, formerly from
New Glasgow and then living in Halifax. “Ian hauled out the College of
Piping Tutor and we worked right through to the section on gracenotes in
the first lesson. The next week, when I came back, I had gone through all
the lessons by myself. Ian started me on lots of other tunes right away.
He really taught me a lot and got me started off on the right track.
Probably one of the most important things I ever learned in piping was how
to make it enjoyable, which I learned through my lessons with
Iain.”
Hector
stayed with Ian for three years and by then was playing in the Dartmouth
Junior’s Grade 5 Pipe Band. He also started going to John MacLean for
lessons that year. “I was really scared of him the first few lessons,”
recalls Hector, “but he is an amazing teacher. He stresses accuracy of
technique, which is very important, but he is also strongly focused on the
music.
“John is
one of the most musical players I’ve ever heard. And he has lots of
stories about the old players, and of the fiddlers too. He played his
pipes for me regularly, which helped me fix in my head what a great set of
bagpipes should sound like. I try to get my own to sound just like
his.
“John
taught me both styles of piping,” continues Hector, “the old style played
by the Highland pioneers, and the newer, more military style usually heard
in competitions today. We sort of alternated between them, the old music
one lesson, the competitive stuff the next.”
In
addition to light music, John had been his principle teacher of
Piobaireachd. “At first I just learned Piobaireachd so I could play it in
competitions,” admits Hector. “The first tune he gave me was ‘The Glen Is
Mine’ and he had to push me to keep at it. He would tell me once I became
more developed as a piper, and I understood the music better, it would
suddenly click and I would be hooked. And that’s just exactly what
happened! I think I might have been competing in Grade 2 when I started to
really like Piobaireachd.”
There have
been other influences on Hector’s development as a piper. He attended
summer sessions at St. Ann’s Gaelic College a number of times. “Bob
Worrall and Ed Neigh both taught me at summer schools. They were terrific.
The Gaelic College is a great place for kids who are into music. We had
some terrific jam sessions - the kids would all get together in one of the
studios. There were a couple of pianos there, and the fiddlers and the
pipers would bring their instruments, and we’d jam - fiddles, small pipes,
guitars, bodhrans and pianos for hours at a time. It was
terrific.”
During
this period, Hector also went for several lessons to Bruce Gandy in PEI
and Bruce worked with him prior to the major international competitions he
had been invited to enter. Hector’s father, Marcie is quick to point out,
“The Nova Scotian piping community is extremely fortunate that Bruce
decided to come and live in the Halifax area”, and Hector agrees. “After
the Nicol-Brown and George Sherriff competitions,” he says, “I started
going to Bruce regularly every two weeks or so and before long I was
seeing him every week. As we got closer to the time for the big
competitions, he started taking me twice and even occasionally three times
a week. Early on, the lessons were mostly on the practice chanter but, as
the year progressed, more time was spent on the pipes. By the end of the
year, the entire lesson was on pipes every time.
“Bruce is
a pretty amazing teacher,” continues Hector. “He makes every lesson count.
He makes it seem like I’m at the competition, playing before the judges.
Getting ready to go to Scotland, he would time me while I was tuning, so I
would get used to the three light system they use over there.” (Note: when
the competitor gives the judge the name of his tune and starts to blow up
his pipes, a green light goes on. Four minutes later, the light changes to
amber. The competitor has only one minute left to complete his tuning and
begin to play. If the light turns red, the competitor is
disqualified.)
“Bruce is
very demanding,” says Hector. “He does not tolerate so much as a missed
gracenote! In the big competitions, you see, where all the pipers are in
top form and playing on well-tuned instruments, errors are deadly. You
have to train yourself to play perfectly. You have to be dedicated to it.
But Bruce also stresses the music. Both are important. Proper execution of
all the movements and musical expression go hand in
hand.
“Since
I’ve been going to Bruce, I find I’m more critical about my own playing,”
Hector continues. “When I’m practicing, if I miss something, I know to go
back and correct it immediately, and to get it right. I find now I can
evaluate my playing, based on the criteria Bruce taught me, and I get more
out of my time between lessons.”
It has all
certainly paid off. Over the short span of his piping career to date,
Hector won a large number of awards. Among the most prestigious were the
Atlantic Canada Champion Supreme titles he won in Grades 4, 3, and 2, and
also the titles for Junior Amateur Piobaireachd and Junior Amateur
Jig. Competing in Grade 1 in 2001, and doing well in both light
music and piobaireachd, Hector was invited to participate in the
Nicol-Brown Invitational Amateur Solo Piping Competition at Trinity
College in Hartford, Connecticut. Competing against some of North
America’s finest amateur players, he placed second in both the
Piobaireachd and the March, Strathspey and Reel events, and third in the
6/8 March event to finish in second place overall. About five weeks later,
he was in Hamilton, Ontario to take part in the George Sherriff
Invitational Amateur Solo Piping Competition where he took first places in
the Piobaireachd and the March, Strathspey and Reel, and a second in the
6/8 March to finish first overall. His prize included a round trip to
Scotland, which he took in 2002.
Hector
remembers these competitions for more than just the prizes won, however.
“Going on the ferry from Yarmouth to attend the Nicol-Brown,” he says, “I
was practicing my pipes on the deck and, when I turned around, there was a
big crowd gathered there listening to me. That was pretty cool. And on the
return trip, which was shortly after 9/11, the customs officer was going
through our stuff when he saw my pipes. He asked if I could play ‘Amazing
Grace’ and I picked up my chanter and played it for him. His face lit up
in a grin from ear to ear. When I finished, he waved us all
through.
“It was a
great honour to be invited to the Nicol-Brown,” he continues. “I’d heard
so much about the Queen’s pipers, Bob Nicol and Bob Brown, and all that
they had done to keep Piobaireachd alive, and this competition has been
held in their memory for a number of years. I was speechless when I got
into the prizes my first time there, and speechless too. People asked me
how I felt, and I just couldn’t find the words to tell them. It was
awesome!”
Five weeks
later, Hector was on a plane to Toronto and on to Hamilton for the George
Sherriff competition held in the Officers Mess of the James Street
Armoury. “On the Friday night, we were all invited to a reception at Bob
Worrall’s home in Burlington,” reports Hector. “All the competitors got to
meet each other and the judges, and we had a great time. During the actual
competition the next day, every time we had a break, we were taken to a
nearby pub for something to eat and, after the awards were presented, we
were all taken out to dinner together. The whole atmosphere was wonderful,
and everyone was so friendly and helpful.”
Hector has
begun to try his hand at composing. “The first tune I wrote was for my
grandfather,” says Hector. “Actually, Allan MacKenzie was getting ready to
publish a book and he called and asked me if I had any tunes. He sort of
pushed me to finish the one I was working on, ‘Angus Macquarrie’s Reel’,
and he put it in his book. I also wrote a 6/8 March called ‘Judy Kit, The
College Mom’ for one of the house mothers at the Gaelic College. Mostly,
though, I do a bit of arranging. In the band’s medley last year, for
example, I arranged the last tune where we break from a reel into the same
tune played as a jig. I’ve done some other arranging for the band,
harmonies and stuff like that.”
The band
is the Dartmouth and District Pipe Band, the Grade 2 contingent of the
Dartmouth Pipe Band’s organization, under the direction of Pipe Major Doug
Boyd, formerly of Antigonish. “Doug is great!” says Hector. “Amazing! He
can get such a wonderful sound out of the band, and he’s able to draw the
music out of us. He’s an exceptional leader and he knows how far to push
us to get the most out of us. He really knows what he is doing. For
example, on competition day, he knows how much to make us play - enough to
get the pipes and our nerves settled, but not too much. Competition day is
a relaxing day for us, believe it or not. Doug really pushes proper
technique, and he pushes us to play musically
too.”
As I was
interviewing Hector for the first time, his proud grandfather, Angus, a
lifelong fisherman and the former warden of Antigonish County, sat with us
in Doctor’s Brook, on a beautiful sunny March day, overlooking the clear
blue waters of the Northumberland Strait. Angus was the one who noticed
the two deer casually wandering across the clearing in front of the
cottage, between us and the water. He was also the one who filled in bits
and pieces of Hector’s amazing piping lineage.
“We know
Lauchlin Macquarrie was a piper on the Isle of Rhum,” Angus said, “and
there may have been others before him that we don’t know about. Then there
were the three Donalds, one after the other, all pipers, the third one
being Am Piobaire Mor, The Big Piper of the Isle of Eigg. I visited Eigg
in 1972 and added a stone to his cairn. My father had done that in 1889,
almost one hundred years before me. After Am Piobaire Mor came another
Lauchlin and yet another Donald, my great-grandfather who is buried on
River Deny’s Mountain, before you get to my grandfather, John the pioneer.
Then there was my father Angus Hector, then me, then my son Marcie, and
then Hector. Eleven generations of pipers. It’s quite a lot to live up
to.”
Hector got
off to a fine start in the 2002 season with a first place finish at the
ACPBA Silver Medal Piobaireachd Challenge held in Antigonish in May. At
the Nicol-Brown, he had some bagpipe trouble but still managed to take a
third place finish. While in Maxville, he won first prize in the Grade 1
March event. “I was up and down all summer, though,” Hector recalls. “For
some reason, I was more nervous, and broke down more often than I had ever
done before. I could tell my own mistakes, you see, and they shook me, I
guess. I knew how important it was to play error free.”
This past
August, grandfather Angus joined sons Marcie and Paul and grandson Hector
in their travel to Scotland. Angus watched and listened with justifiable
pride as the young man vied for top honours among some of the best young
pipers in the world. “I was able to play in the Under 18 events in some
places,” Hector recalls, “but in others, such as at Glenfinnan, I found
myself up against experienced pipers I had only read about before. It was
a terrifying experience, but a rewarding one too.” Rewarding in more than
once sense of the word, for Hector came home with first and third prizes
from the Lonach Games, and first and second prizes in the March,
Strathspey and Reel, and Piobaireachd events from the Cowal Games. He also
competed at the MacGregor Cup Invitational Competition at Oban. A tour of
the land of their ancestors brought the four Macquarrie men to Fort
William, Glenfinnan, Mull, Ulva, Arisaig, Morar, Mallaig, Skye, and on to
their ancestral home on the Isle of Eigg. Hector, Marcie and Paul laid
their stones beside Angus’s, and his father’s before him, on the cairn of
their ancestor, Donald Macquarrie, Am Piobaire Mor, the tradition
continued into yet another generation.
Back home
in Halifax Nova Scotia, Hector, now a Grade 12 student at the Halifax
Grammar School, was preparing to defend his title at the George Sherriff
competition when his 84 year old grandfather was suddenly rushed to the
hospital. As his condition worsened, Angus was transferred from Antigonish
to the QE2 Health Science Centre in Halifax where Hector spent many hours
at his bedside, playing all the old tunes for him on his practice chanter.
Angus would drift in and out of consciousness and occasionally would
comment. “Port Math”, he would say in Gaelic, “good
tune”.
Consequently, Hector was unable to play at the George Sherriff this year,
but there will be other opportunities. Angus passed away peacefully on
November 10th and was buried in Arisaig’s St. Margaret of Scotland Parish
Cemetery on the 13th. As he watched over his grandson in life, Angus, no
doubt surrounded by his many piper ancestors, continues to watch over him,
and to listen proudly. To be sure, there may be a lot of pressure, being
the eleventh in a line of Macquarrie pipers, but Hector’s young shoulders
are broad and strong, and he will do just fine.
