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.
