Champion bagpiper Brendon Eade will perform with the NZSO in a special concert to celebrate the British & Irish Lions Tour tonight.
Brendon has won every major bagpiping prize going and when he's not playing the pipes he's a doctor in the Waikato.
Photo: supplied
Listen to Brendon Eade talk and play on Nine to Noon
Brendon will perform a guest solo in Peter Maxwell Davies' An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise at the Michael Fowler Centre as part of the concert Lands of Hope and Glory – it's one of the few times in the orchestra's 70-year history that it will feature a bagpiper.
He says there's good reason why bagpipes are seldom heard in an orchestral setting.
"A couple of worlds collide here – you've got your traditional instrument versus classical instruments, but the main challenge for pipers is we just don't play in a pitch that is particularly sympathetic to playing with other instruments."
Pipe music, he says, is written in the key of A. While concert A is at 440 hertz, pipes play at about 480 hertz so he has had his Highland bagpipes modified for the occasion.
Brendon's bagpipes are made of African blackwood and ivory and older than the NZSO – they were made in the 1930s.
"Generally it's believed that era, the late 1880s early 1900s, the quality of the African blackwood they were made from was superior to today's product. Older pipes are generally deemed to be of excellent quality."
His instrument has four different reeds, three drones with a different reed in each to make the constant sound harmonics in the background and then a 'chanter', which is what the piper holds to play the tune.
The piece Brendon will perform was inspired by a wedding the composer Peter Maxwell Davies attended in Orkney.
"As he was walking home from the wedding he had the idea of the piece. It's supposed to be upbeat and jolly and implies that the orchestra gets slightly more inebriated as the performance goes on!"
Brendon was first exposed to the pipes while watching his sister's Highland dance performances.
"I was really just taken with the sound. I learned in Hamilton with the Hamilton Band under Jim Wilson, you get pulled into the community."
Although he enjoys playing in bands, it is the challenge of soloing he likes best.
"I do like the pressure the solo puts on you, you've got to have outstanding technique and an outstanding bagpipe from a sound point of view,"
Brendon refined his technique while he lived in Inverness in Scotland for five years, where he played with some of the best pipers in the world.
"Anyone who's interested in furthering their piping career usually makes their way to Scotland. Maybe if Warren Gatland's listening he could sneak a few more Scottish players into the Lions squad!"