Shenandoah Pipe School, Part II

The instructors' concert was this evening at Millbrook High School. It was good to see so many Presbyterians in the audience.

The show was remarkable. It is inspiring to see a challenging instrument played with such precision and virtuosity. Stuart Liddell, a lead piper with Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada and world piping champion, was clearly the star of the evening. He played one of the fastest and most multi-parted hornpipes I believe I have ever heard. Stuart has played at Carnegie Hall and now he can add Millbrook Auditorium to his list of performance venues. If you happen to be interested in very good recordings of traditional pipe music, the SFU band is one of the finest. I have added a link to their site in my "Links Worth Visiting." Scroll down. You will see it.

Tomorrow is the last day of pipe school. I have learned a lot. I am acutely aware of where my attention in practice needs to be placed, which really is a good thing. Step one toward improving in anything is a sober assessment of what you can do and what you can't do. As much as exercises on pipe music embellishments bore me to tears, I will do them. I prefer tunes, however. That day, in time, will come.

I said I would post my reading list for next week. Here it is. I have kept it intentionally light in order to take notes and absorb the material. Since I have spent the past two weeks studying music -- guitar one week, the bagpipe the other -- I have decided to continue the theme. I will be reading Greg Scheer's The Art of Worship: A Musician's Guide to Leading Modern Worship. Scheer is a music associate with Calvin College and Seminary's Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, MI. The chapter titles of the book will give you a sense of Scheer's perspective: "Setting the Stage;" "Assembling the Team;" "Planning Worship;" "Making Music;" "Timeless Hymns in a Contemporary Context;" "Rehearsing and Leading;" and "Looking to the Future."

The other book I will be reading is by Lajos Egri. The title is The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. The book was first published in 1942. Egri, originally from Hungary, founded the Egri School of Writing in NYC in the 1930s. This text is one of the required texts for the writing class I will be taking at Christchurch College, Oxford in July.

That's it for the moment. Peace.