Pushing the boundaries of traditional bagpipe tunes
Music
CHOOSING a band name can be difficult enough without picking one that has pronunciation issues. The 11 members of Tryst, a pipe band with a difference, like the idea that their name might not sound as some dictionaries suggest it should.
“It seems to be a dialect thing,” says Tryst spokesman Calum MacCrimmon. “We’ve been asked a lot already and I think it’s a question that’s going to keep coming up: are we “tryst” with a soft y, as in grist, or with a hard y, as in price. Two of the guys in the band have worked for 10 years at the National Piping Centre, where there’s the Pipers Tryst Hotel, and they’ve always referred to it with a “hard y”, so we feel that’s right for us. It may not be by the book but it feels right in the heart.”
Readers with longer memories might remember that there’s an apt precedent here in the Glasgow Tryst, a traditional music celebration in the early-1990s that was very strong on the “hard y” pronunciation.
For MacCrimmon, it’s a talking point but one that he hopes won’t overshadow what Tryst are trying to do as they prepare for their full concert debut at Celtic Connections.
“Tryst is something that various members of the ensemble have been talking about doing for quite a few years,” he says. “But actually getting the 10 pipers, who all play in one or more busy bands, into the same place at the same time is quite a challenge. There’s also a challenge in the music but it’s a fun challenge.”
The idea with Tryst is to follow the example of Grade 1 championship pipe bands in terms of quality while presenting the bagpipes in a way that hasn’t been heard before.
“We’ve all been massively impressed by the ensemble sound these top-level pipe bands achieve with their piping corps,” says MacCrimmon. “Some of us have actually played in these bands and we know how hard they work to get up to that standard. The music we’re playing, though, while it draws on the tradition of ceol mor, the classical music of the bagpipes, is all new and all written by the ten pipers in the group.”
As well as having connections with possibly the most illustrious family name in bagpipe music, MacCrimmon has history in giving this music a contemporary slant. His 2013 commission for the Blas festival of Highland music, Boraraig, drew on his family roots and with the Big Music Society, an organisation he fronts with fellow Tryst member John Mulhearn, he has been pushing the boundaries of ceol mor with various events over the past few years.
In order to get Tryst off the ground, he and Mulhearn decided to commission each of Tryst’s 10 pipers, with support from Creative Scotland, to write a piece of music. The brief was to show through the music what ceol mor means to them today and to create something that reflects a subject close to their hearts or has significantly influenced their lives.
One of the pieces they’ll play on their debut concert was triggered by the sadness felt at the rise in racism during the Brexit referendum. Another celebrates cultural identity and how it connects us rather than divides us.
It is, says MacCrimmon, emotional music and although Tryst is essentially a pipe band, there was no hard and fast rule imposed on the composers that the pieces should feature all ten pipers all of the time. Other elements such as clapping and body percussion, singing, cittern accompaniment, electronic beats and sampling figure at various stages and with these in mind, the group has involved sound engineer Andrea Gobbi as an integral, eleventh member.
With commitments to groups including Breabach, Treacherous Orchestra, Old Blind Dogs and others, the ten pipers set aside three days and nights a few weeks ago to get the ensemble sound into shape and then another day ahead of their first public appearance at the Scots Trad Music Awards to rehearse music that was written especially for that event, rather than preview the commissioned pieces.
“The three-day retreat we had at Teapot Studios in Perthshire is probably the way we’ll work from now on,” says MacCrimmon. “We’re not geared up to tour but we are planning to keep Tryst going on a project by project basis. We’d like to record and one of the things we’ve talked about is bringing in a top level piper from another tradition – and there are plenty to choose from – to compose, arrange and participate in a new work. That idea really excites us.”
‘‘ Actually getting the 10 pipers into the same place at the same time is quite a challenge
Tryst appear at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on January 21