November 2024
This was a great way to wrap up the year.
I was honored to be the guest soloist for the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s “Harmony in the Highlands” concert in 2024 at the Long Center on Riverside Drive in Austin. I think this might have been the first time that the Symphony has featured bagpipes in a performance, so I’m fairly sure that I’m the only piper to have played with the Austin Symphony.
Sun News Austin has an article about the concert, if you’d like to read the full article about the concert you can find it here:
Meh.. so he misspelled my name in the article, it was still a great gig.
I don’t think that there are any video or audio recordings of these performances, but if you’re curious about how they incorporated pipes into a symphony and would like to see this piece being played by a very good piper (not me,) you can watch it at the link. Pipes start at about twelve minutes.
I can not stress this enough, this video is not of me. The composer Peter Maxwell Davies tells a great story of how this piece came to be, To me it was impressive that musicians of their skill levels can play and seem to not be able to play well. Who knows? – that may have been actual scotch they were passing around.
– Enjoy