They aren’t just blowing hot air.
Throughout March, the whir of bagpipes and the beat of snare and bass drums fill the air as St. Patrick’s Day parades and festivals celebrate Celtic culture from tiny villages to big cities.
A group of New York musicians, many of whom have marched for years up Fifth Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day, became the New York Metro Pipe Band in 2010 with the intent of competing against the world’s best.
In less than two years, the group of about 40 pipers and 20 drummers exceeded its lofty goals, winning a world championship last summer at its first international competition in Scotland.
“We were just hoping realistically to qualify,” said Yale doctoral student Matt Welch, the band’s musical director.
Welch, along with Dublin rock ‘n’ roll drummer Adrian Mordaunt, and band president Michael Mahoney, who dreamed of forming the “super group” while in a band at Iona College, are among the band’s founders.
NY Metro competed as a beginner Grade 3 band, but was elevated to Grade 2 after winning the world title last summer. The group’s goal is to return to Scotland in a year or two and compete at Grade 1, the highest level and one that only a handful of bands in North America have achieved, band manager Andy Hamilton said.
“We’re trying to take this folk art to the highest possible level, to a level that would be similar to the Metropolitan Opera or New York Symphony,” Hamilton said before a recent rehearsal.
Welch was voted last year by National Public Radio as one of America’s Top 40 composers under age 40. He commutes from his home in New Haven, Conn., for band practice every Monday night on Long Island.
“I guess we’re just looking for something that sounds fresh,” said Welch, who chooses what music the band performs, mixing traditional Irish and Scottish marches, jigs and reels. “We look for music that is very traditional, but has a certain rigor.”
The band’s percussion section sometimes takes on the feel of a rock band, said Mordaunt, who has recorded and toured with the Dublin-based band mrnorth. Despite his affinity for hard-driving rock beats, Mordaunt said his association with bagpipe bands goes back to his childhood in Ireland.
“Before I could walk and talk, I was at pipe band competitions,” he said.
He came to New York with his rock ‘n’ roll compatriots about 12 years ago. And although mrnorth has enjoyed success, recording with the Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison and playing at the Bonaroo music festival in Tennessee, Mordaunt found himself returning to pipe bands.
Now head of the percussion section, Mordaunt sometimes sits behind a large drum kit while composing tunes for snare and bass drums for NY Metro.
“Some of the tempos that we deal in, a lot of them kind of lend themselves in a way to swing music, jazz music even,” he said. “I try to get the drummers to think ‘let’s not be so straight, one-line about it. Let’s try to get a little bit of feel, a little bit of funk in there.'”
Some NY Metro pipers recently accompanied a classical guitarist and flutist on one recording called El Paco Grande; another member recorded a song complementing the hip-hop beats of a Jamaican reggae artist. Band members are open to future collaborations, but intend to keep their focus for now on just becoming better bagpipers and drummers.
Welch said he and other NY Metro founders expected to compete for a world title in about five years. Instead, they found themselves in Glasgow not long after they started playing together.
During the competition, each band stands individually in a large circle facing each other and performs. They are judged on tuning, the tightness of the rhythm section, the proper interpretation of the tunes, and a good balance of traditional and innovative music, Welch said.
“The world championship is the pinnacle of tonal treatment,” Welch said. “Each instrument must be speaking sonorously. You don’t want that whiny, thin sound.”
NY Metro members are somewhat bashful about their success and continually speak of improving their musicianship. They know bagpipe bands can sometimes sound like a bunch of screaming cats coming down the boulevard, but say that when the instrument is played expertly, the musical possibilities are boundless.
“We’re a group of very focused, goal-oriented people,” piper Michael Faughnan said. “…we put all the egos aside and say ‘let’s go after this objective.'”
Band members pay an initiation fee of $100 and pay for their own uniforms, an ancient red Gordon tartan that costs about $1,000. Most of the musicians also cover their own travel expenses to competitions, although the band helped defray the costs of the trip to Scotland.
NY Metro occasionally marches in parades to help finance its annual budget of $75,000. For the March crunch of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, the band prefers playing “corporate gigs,” performing at Wall Street parties rather than in parades.
But the musicians primarily want to play field competitions or perform in concert halls. Their success last year in Scotland has earned the band an invitation to participate in the Balmoral Classic, an indoor gathering of top bagpiping bands in Pittsburgh this November.
“We’re just like a softball player who wants to be the best player in his adult male league,” said band treasurer Pat O’Hara. “All we want to do is compete and get better.”
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.