Coming off of its first big win of the season, SFU’s pipe band looks forward to representing the university at world competitions.
Earlier this month, the team swept the competition at the Victoria Highland Games, placing first in all four of its events. The team even beat out the L.A. Scotts — the top pipe band in the US.
Individual awards were seized by Coquitlam piper Alastair Lee, who won first place in the professional piping category, and Grant Maxwell and Gavin MacRae, who tied for first in professional side drumming.
According to SFU student and pipeband member, Kevin McLean, the season is just getting started. After the competition last week in Victoria, the team is getting ready to travel to Bellingham on June 7, and then to the Coquitlam highland games on June 21. After that, the team will play in Seattle at the end of July.
On an international scale, the team is also preparing for the World Championships, to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in mid-August. “We play two events there: the [March, Strathspey & Reel event] (MSR) and we also play a medley event, which is more contemporary. You could say [it’s] more exciting, musical, and creative,” said McLean.
The team has finished top two in the world in 15 of its 28 years competing at the championship; however the band will have to adjust this year as its leadership has shifted. “Terry Lee was the pipe major for over 30 years. Terry retired,” McLean said.
Taking his place is Alan Bevan, who has been a member of the Simon Fraser University pipeband since 1995. In addition to winning awards such as overall winner at the Masters’ Invitational (2009), Bevan has won the World Championship with the band on several occasions.
“I’m quite well-versed in what the band’s expectation is and what the direction is, and I don’t see really changing that in any radical way,” Bevan said in a video on PipesDrums.
“We have a very strong young core in the band,” Lee said in the same video. “It’s there to be made a new era.”
McLean described the unique contribution of the pipe band to SFU: “The pipe band in general is a unique trademark of the university. Not many universities have a pipe band. No other university in the world has a pipe band as high a quality as ours. We bring the university to the world stage: Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, Mormon Tabernacle choir, and the Lincoln Center in New York.”
As the team continues to prepare for the world stage, students are invited to hear them performing on Sunday mornings on Burnaby Mountain across from the library in the contemporary theatre.
