After 36 years, the SFU Pipe Band has a new leader.
Terry Lee, who was been the band’s pipe major since 1977, is retiring, leaving the position in the hands of piper Alan Bevan. Bevan, who along with his wife Bonnie has been involved with the band since 1995, was formerly the pipe major of a competing band, the Abbotsford Police Pipe Band, but always had his eye on the SFU band.
“It’s great. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do from when I first heard the band play when I was really young,” said Bevan. “I’d always aspired to play with the band. I finally got the opportunity and have never looked back.”
In his years with the band, Bevan has been involved with the tuning team, whose job it is to ensure that all the sets of bagpipes are in tune and moving at the same rate.
The changing of the guard comes on the heels of the band placing fourth in the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow this past August, a result that Lee described at the time as, “Not what we came for, but we’re in the prizes.” The SFU pipe band has six championship wins under their belt, but were overcome by bad weather on the day of this year’s competition.
Bevan described his reaction to the results as “kind of mixed feelings.”
Lee is not leaving the band entirely, but will remain involved with tuning, music construction, and band administration.
“We had a very strong season locally, and we’re always working on improving and I think we made some gains in a number of areas,” he continued. Bevan pointed specifically to a new medley that the band worked on for the past year that actually beat the current world champions on the day of the qualifier round.
“We felt really good, we had a strong performance,” said Bevan. “It’s always a bit of a risk when you take a new competition set out, because you don’t know how it’s going to go over with the Scottish judges, and we only get one crack at them.”
Bevan has already taken over the pipe major position, though the band is currently on a break. They’ll resume practising later this month.
Lee is not leaving the band entirely, but will remain involved with tuning, music construction, and band administration, something that Bevan described as an “unusual transition.”
“Usually when a pipe major steps down he actually leaves the band or he just doesn’t have anything more to do with leadership,” Bevan explained; “In our case Terry is going to be very involved. I find that quite comforting that I’m going to have access to all that experience.”
Once band practices resume, Bevan plans to make some music changes, but to mainly keep the band on the same trajectory that they are presently on.
“I forsee it being a very smooth transition,” said Bevan, “not a lot of bumps. Hopefully. I really don’t think there [would be a reason for that]; the band’s not really rebuilding. It’s not broken and I’m certainly not going to try to fix it.”
