The Simon Fraser University Pipe Band has it in the bag | Canada Voices

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Reid Maxwell competed at the pipe band world championships for the first time when he was 14 years old. Fifty years later and now the lead drummer of the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band, he played at worlds again this summer alongside a group of elite musicians, including one following in his footsteps: 14-year-old Megan Millar.

In their own ways, Mr. Maxwell and Ms. Millar are the embodiment of a Scottish music dynasty in Burnaby, B.C. Mr. Maxwell, 64, has been part of the gifted leadership core of the band for the past three decades, creating a culture of excellence alongside current and former pipe majors Alan Bevan and Terry Lee and pipe sergeant Jack Lee. Ms. Millar is the latest youth player to come out of a school set up by Simon Fraser to both promote the music and develop talent for the top band.

The band is considered one of the most entertaining performers of traditional Scottish music, drawing crowds wherever it plays. Its goal every year is to win in Scotland, where piping and drumming is synonymous with the national identity.

In the past 30 years, they have been crowned world champions six times, along with as many drumming wins and a slew of other top band and individual honours at highland games near and far. This year, they won at the Pacific Northwest Highland Games in Enumclaw, Wash., over a band from Texas, and at the recent world championships in Glasgow, they came in fourth.

Piping and drumming is a unique musical endeavour: You’re rewarded not for individual brilliance (though being in Simon Fraser means you have to be individually brilliant), but for playing and sounding the same as everyone else in the band.

With bagpipes being a famously temperamental instrument, it’s an almost Sisyphean task to tune more than 20 pipers so they sound as one. That requires annual trips to Northern Ireland to source new chanter reeds, meticulous testing of the instruments themselves, and a lot of practice one-on-one and as a group to adjust tone and playing style.

Compounding this challenge is making it work with 20 other snare, tenor and bass drummers who all do this in their spare time. Several of them leave or join every year, and a few have to fly in to practise.

And then everything has to go right in Glasgow, where the high-moisture weather makes the tuning of bagpipes particularly tough, the arrangement of the songs has to be innovative to be competitive, and the nerves of playing for the world championships have to be calmed.

“It’s like winning the Stanley Cup. It’s very difficult to do,” says Mr. Maxwell, who grew up in Scotland and moved to Canada when he was 20.

The band is affiliated with Simon Fraser University, which in 1981 approached what was then known as the Port Moody Pipe Band with an offer to fund it and provide practice space in exchange for performances at marquee events.

The next year, the band won the North American championships, held annually in Maxville, Ont., and soon rose to be among the top in the world, but they kept falling short of first.

That changed after Mr. Maxwell moved to Vancouver and joined in the early 1990s, having won the worlds a few years earlier with Toronto’s 78th Fraser Highlanders. Simon Fraser subsequently won three times before the turn of the century.

One of the reasons for their success is that the core leaders of the band have endured. There have been just two pipe majors in the past three decades, Mr. Maxwell has been the sole drum lead during that entire time, and Jack Lee and Rob MacNeil, the board president and a piper, have been with the band since its inception.

“We play a long game,” Mr. Lee says.

“If we happen to win a massive prize, it’s not the end. It’s just another little excellent marker along the way. We’ve had many, many wonderful moments and a number of low points along the way. But we’ve built this resilience that we’re gonna fight our way back and get back to work and play better next time.”

In the mid-90s, they created the Robert Malcolm Memorial Pipe Band, a system of feeder bands which, combined with their success on the world stage, means they are able to continually develop and recruit talented musicians to the Grade 1 band. (Bands compete in grades, one being the highest level and five being the lowest.) Mr. MacNeil says that while “a small generation of players was lost” during the pandemic, they are building back up their numbers. About 70 students attend classes every week, and kids as young as 6 can join in the fun.

Then there’s Piping Hot Summer Drummer, billed as the world’s largest piping and drumming school and run by the band’s leaders and top players, making its Okanagan home an annual destination for young musicians from as far away as Australia.

Mr. Maxwell approaches teaching drums with the philosophy that it has to be cool for the kids looking to learn. “I try and make sure they have fun, make sure they laugh a lot. I can be incredibly strict and stern with them, but I like to make them laugh,” he says.

Many members achieve individual honours at solo competitions in North America and Britain, and several former members have gone on to lead other bands. (This year’s world champions were led by pipe major Stuart Liddell and drum lead Steven McWhirter, who both used to play with Simon Fraser.)

“When you look at the number of players that that band has produced, it’s really impressive,” says Dani Millar, a bagpiper with the band and mother of Megan Millar. “Especially the quality, the level of a lot of the people that have come out of that band, people could play in any top band they want to.”

Being in British Columbia means they often don’t have a chance to compete against bands of their level until the worlds. Mr. Bevan says that means they have to always challenge themselves to create pressure.

“We have to self-critique a lot, and in a way, that’s been a strength of the band,” he says. “It’s a tough thing to do, especially with incoming players who are less experienced, to try and create an environment where they’re feeling the same kind of pressure as they can locally when we’re not technically competing against anybody.”

As with the broader culture of Scottish music, the tradition extends into younger generations, with the children of Mr. Bevan, Mr. Lee, Mr. Maxwell and several other sets of family members all playing in the band currently or at some point – including Megan Millar and both of her parents.

One of the band’s challenges is regular turnover, with younger members leaving for postsecondary education and older ones for new jobs, or to leadership in other bands. Mr. Maxwell has built an entirely new drum corps a few times, and he puts the cohesiveness of the group above pure skill.

“I’m looking for good people who have talent. I’m not looking for talented people who might be good,” Mr. Maxwell says.

Simon Fraser has also for a long time had one of the largest contingents of female players, something that sets it apart from other pipe bands that are made up almost entirely of men.

“There’s so many young people and so many women in the drum corps, and that just makes it a very great environment to be in as a young woman because there’s a lot of people that I can relate to,” says Megan Millar, who also won individual honours at the Pacific Northwest games.

At the world championships in August, Simon Fraser went up against 13 bands across two days, marching into the competition circle four times for judges who score the piping and drumming individually and the band as an ensemble.

For the members of Simon Fraser, it’s all worth it for the fleeting moments when they all hit their peak together.

“In that five to seven minutes in the circle,” Dani Millar says, “it becomes like a transcendental kind of experience.”

Bagpipes: An anatomy lesson

Blowing pipe

The piper continually inflates the air bag, which includes a valve to stop air escaping

Drone pipes

As air passes through causing the reeds inside the pipes to vibrate, a continuous melody is produced

Chanter

The higher-pitched pipe allows the piper to control the melody

Air bag

Air collects within the air bag, circulating before being expelled through pipes

Pressure

The piper applies pressure to the air bag with their arm to control the amount of air that passes through the pipes

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

HOW IT WORKS; REUTERS CONNECT

Blowing pipe

The piper continually inflates the air bag, which includes a valve to stop air escaping

Drone pipes

As air passes through causing the reeds inside the pipes to vibrate, a continuous melody is produced

Chanter

The higher-pitched pipe allows the piper to control the melody

Air bag

Air collects within the air bag, circulating before being expelled through pipes

Pressure

The piper applies pressure to the air bag with their arm to control the amount of air that passes through the pipes

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

HOW IT WORKS; REUTERS CONNECT

Blowing pipe

The piper continually inflates the air bag, which includes a valve to stop air escaping

Drone pipes

As air passes through causing the reeds inside the pipes to vibrate, a continuous melody is produced

Pressure

The piper applies pressure to the air bag with their arm to control the amount of air that passes through the pipes

Chanter

The higher-pitched pipe allows the piper to control the melody

Air bag

Air collects within the air bag, circulating before being expelled through pipes

MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

HOW IT WORKS; REUTERS CONNECT

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