Andrea Boyd’s
rise through the piping ranks in Nova Scotia has been nothing short of
meteoric. From her first lessons at the age of eight, Andrea has
demonstrated not only a high degree of musical talent, but a dedication to
the many hours of practice and study needed to satisfy her desire to be
the best piper she can be. Her first place finish in the ‘Targe’ March,
Strathspey, and Reel event at the Highland Society of London’s Annual Solo
Piping Competition on November 3rd is but the latest in a long string of
competitive honours which have come her way. At home in Antigonish for the
Christmas holidays, I had a chance to sit down and talk with her about her
piping career.
Andrea Marie Boyd was born on June 30th, 1983, the eldest of two
daughters of Iain and Margaret (Karr) Boyd of Antigonish. “Piping
and drumming have been in my family for generations,” she says.
“My father was a drummer with the Antigonish Legion Pipe Band, and
my uncle Doug was a piper with the band as well. Doug taught at the
Gaelic College, and was pipe major of the Scotia Legion Pipe Band
and then the Halifax Police Pipe Band for a few years. He is now the
pipe major of the Dartmouth and District Pipe Band. My grandfather
Johnny Boyd was both a drummer and a piper, and we can trace our
line back to ‘Iain am Piobaire’, John MacGillivray, the Piper to
MacDonald of Glenaladale, who immigrated to Antigonish County in the
early 1800s.”
Andrea took her first lessons in 1992. Ed Neigh of Wellesley,
Ontario, piping instructor at St. Francis Xavier University’s
Scottish Folk Arts Summer School, remembers Andrea well. “She was
so little,” he recalled, “her feet couldn’t reach the floor
and she kept swinging them back and forth all through her
lessons.” Madelyn Evans, who also taught Andrea at the summer
school, remembers Andrea’s little fingers stretched to the limit
to cover all the holes on the practice chanter, and her
determination to do it right. That fall, Andrea started lessons with
Valerie Cooke at the Antigonish Highland Society School of Piping
and in February of 1994 joined the Antigonish Highland Society Pipe
Band. Over the next few years she continued to study with Valerie
and with John Walsh. She played in competition with the band for the
first time in 1995, and was with them when they won the Grade 4
North American Pipe Band Championship in Maxville, Ontario.
“I learned my first piobaireachd in just three weeks,” Andrea
remembers. She had shown little interest in that branch of piping at
first, but as the summer competition season progressed, and one of
her closest rivals in the Novice March events was bringing home
awards from the Novice Piobaireachd events as well, Andrea decided
to give it a try. At the St. Ann’s Highland Games in August, she
came away the victor. “I was hooked,” she says. “I studied
piobaireachd locally, but in the fall of 1998 I started going over
to Summerside, PEI to study with Bruce Gandy.”
Andrea’s association with Bruce Gandy and the College of Piping
led to her involvement with the Canadian Millennium Pipe Band,
formed under the leadership of Pipe Major Iain Whitelaw. “Pipers
from across the country were selected to take part,” Andrea says.
“We were all sent the music, uniforms were ordered, and we got
together for two weeks at the beginning of the summer of 1999 to
rehearse and perform as a Grade 2 band. It was a great opportunity
to meet other young Canadian pipers, and we had a lot of fun.” In
the fall, Andrea joined the College of Piping Pipe Band but returned
to the Antigonish Highland Society Pipe Band in the spring of 2001.
During those formative years, Andrea moved up through the grades,
winning numerous Champion Supreme awards for light music in Novice
Juvenile, Grade 4 and Grade 2 as well as for both Junior and Senior
Amateur Piobaireachd. Reaching Grade 1, the highest amateur grade,
Andrea was soon displaying her winning abilities and was named the
Champion Supreme for Atlantic Canada two years in a row. This
honour, plus her ability as a piobaireachd player, brought her
invitations to compete in the Nicol-Brown competition in Hartford,
Connecticut and the George Sheriff Memorial competition in Hamilton,
Ontario. In 2000, she travelled to Scotland where she competed for
the first time in the MacGregor Memorial Cup Piobaireachd
Competition.
2001 was to be the banner year for Andrea, however. She continued
her string of piping victories in Atlantic Canada and was named
Amateur Piper of the Day at the Pictou County Indoor Meet, the
Metropolitan Highland Games in Halifax, the New Brunswick Highland
Games in Fredericton, and the Hector Festival in Pictou. She also
won the Antigonish County Piper of the Day, the Allan Beaton
Memorial Trophy for combined points in the Grade 1 March and
Strathspey and Reel events, and the Jig event at the Antigonish
Highland Games. These victories led to once again receiving four
ACPBA Champion Supreme Awards, including Grade 1 March, Grade 1
Strathspey and Reel, Senior Amateur Jig, and Senior Amateur
Piobaireachd.
In August, Andrea travelled to the North American Championships in
Maxville, Ontario where she won three seconds and a third to finish
in second place overall, following up the next day in Montreal with
three thirds and a fifth. Home a brief while to repack and bid
farewell to her friends and family Andrea, with travel assistance
from both the Scottish Travel Bursary Fund and the Piobaireachd
Society of Antigonish, headed for competitions in Scotland and
a year working as a GAP student in England. She competed in the Open
Piping events at Crieff before heading on to Oban where she placed
fourth in the MacGregor Memorial Cup Piobaireachd event. “They
don’t have a graded system like we do in North America,” Andrea
explains. “The MacGregor Cup is an open event for any pipers in
the world under the age of twenty-two. Twenty-four of us played in
the morning and only six of us were called back to play again in the
finals. Of these, four were from North America, one was from
Brittany, and only one was from Scotland.” Andrea was placed
fourth overall. The following week, she competed in the B Grade Open
Piping events at the Cowal Championships in Dunoon but didn’t
place. “Some of the world’s best pipers were there,” Andrea
remembers. “When I finished my pieces, I got to hear many of them
play. It was such a great experience.”
A graduate of the Dr. John High Gillis Regional High School in
Antigonish, Andrea completed her competitive tour of Scotland and
headed south to England where she is working for a year as a GAP
Student at the Glebe House Preparatory School in Hunstanton,
Norfolk. “The GAP program allows young high school graduates to
travel to the UK and work as a volunteer for a year before entering
university,” Andrea explains. “I had asked to be placed in
Scotland, but was placed in Norfolk instead. Hunstanton is a small
seaside village on what is called ‘The Wash’ (one of the kings
of England dropped the crown jewels in the ocean there). Admiral
Horatio Nelson was born nearby. Everywhere you go in England,
there’s such a tremendous lot of history!
“My school is what is called an independent school,” Andrea
continues. “You might call it a private school here in Canada. It
was originally a boys’ school, but about twenty years ago they
began admitting girls. There is a Nursery program for children aged
6 months to 3 years, a Pre-Preparatory School of children aged 4 to
7, and the main Preparatory School for children aged 8 to 13. There
are 160 students in all, with about 20 full-time boarders who stay
from Monday to Friday and go home on the weekends. Others do
flexi-boarding, which means they choose to board for one or two
nights each week. All the students are from the area, though. The
furthest away is probably less than 40 minutes. They board part time
to get experience before going off to senior schools where they will
stay full time, seven days a week.
“The school day is so different than what kids experience here,”
says Andrea. “The boarding students get up at 7 AM to wash and
dress. I monitor their music practice from 7:30 to 8, and then we
have breakfast. I supervise the arrival of the day students before
classes begin at 9. We have assemblies in the Hall three mornings a
week. Every student either goes to choir practice or to Bible Study.
Grace is said at every meal, and you are taught how to use your
knife, fork and spoon correctly. (Even to eat ice cream, you must
use both your spoon and your fork.) The children are sorted into
houses (St. Edmund’s, L’Estrange, and Barber’s). The students
in each house take their meals together at an assigned table and
they have house meetings. They are awarded stars by their teachers
according to how well their work has been done, and every Thursday
they count the stars. The children encourage each other to excel,
and at the end of the year the house with the most stars wins the
House Cup. (Did you think these things only happen at Harry
Potter’s school, Hogwarts?) Afternoon tea is served at 4:15 and
tea (supper) is served at 6 when the school day is over and the day
students leave to go home.
“It’s not all academics, though,” Andrea continues. “All
students attend ‘games’ three days a week and play on house
sports teams. Many of the students learn to play musical instruments
or sing in the school choir, and there is a great deal of emphasis
on the preparations for the annual Arts Festival at which the
students of each house perform for thirty minutes - singing,
dancing, reciting poetry. They do major musical plays in the winter
term. The goal is to become a well-rounded individual.
“I do everything from assisting in the classroom to assisting the
coach of the Boys’ Under Eleven Rugby Team. I knew nothing about
rugby before coming here. When I go back after Christmas, I will go
on the School’s trip to a ski resort in Porte De Soleil,
Switzerland with kids aged 6 to 14. I’ll have no assigned duties,
though. This will be a little vacation for me instead.”
Andrea has her own room in the girl’s boarding house. “Actually,
since I was the School’s first female GAP student, they had no
room for me. The janitor had to convert the telephone room into a
bedroom. He built a wardrobe for me, and put in a small bed, raising
it so he could build shelves under it. The room is rather small, as
you might expect, but it’s my own space. I’ve got lots of
pictures of family and friends and posters on the walls. The girls
get a great kick out of it - especially my piping posters!”
Piping is something new and unusual at the school and people don’t
know quite what to make of it. “I could practice my chanter in my
room, and I could play my pipes in another part of the school. The
Headmaster thought it was funny that I travelled all the way to
London for lessons. I have to travel four hours on trains, buses and
the underground to study with John Angus Smith, usually for at least
six hours spread over two days. Then I have to travel back to the
school again. It takes a whole weekend to get a lesson.”
Andrea first met John Angus Smith at the Cowal Gathering in 2000.
She met him again at Maxville in 2001 and arranged to study with him
when she went to England. Because of the travel, She has only had
four weekend sessions with him so far, and once he came north to
Norfolk to teach her there. “It was not until I won the Targe that
my Headmaster started taking my piping seriously. He’s since asked
me to play at the school’s Remembrance Day Ceremony and for Robbie
Burns’ Day,” Andrea says with a grin.
The ‘Targe’ is a large ornamented Celtic shield given as first
prize for one of the March, Strathspey, and Reel events at the
Highland Society of London’s solo piping competitions in November.
“That was a memorable experience,” says Andrea. “It was open
to all pipers who had never won it before and competitors came from
all over - Canada, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, Sweden.
There were twenty-five competitors in all, and my judges were Pipe
Major James Banks, formerly of the Scots Guards, and John Wilson,
formerly of the Strathclyde Police Pipe Band. We had to submit one
set of our own choice.” Andrea placed first, followed by Callum
Beaumont of Bo’ness, Scotland and Andrew Carlisle of Northern
Ireland. “I also played in the piobaireachd event for the Highland
Club Trophy,” Andrea continues, “but I had a couple of note
errors which knocked me out of the running. Still, that was a great
experience too.”
Andrea returns to England at the end of December to finish her year
as a GAP student at the Glebe House Preparatory School. She is
hoping to be able to go north to Scotland for some of the summer
competitions in 2002 but plans to be back in Antigonish by September
when she will enroll in the Business program at St.FX University.
She will, of course, continue with her piping. “It’s a major
part of my life,” says Andrea, “and I’ve still got a lot to
learn. I’m only just beginning to get the hang of it.” Some
beginning!
