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Homecoming planned for piper

Homecoming planned for piper 

BY DEREK YOUNG

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A major coup for this year’s Greater Sudbury Celtic Festival & Highland Games, to be held May 22 and 23, will be the homecoming of pipe major Bill Livingstone. (The other coup is the appearance of fiddler Ashley MacIsaac.)
Livingstone, a lawyer, and a world-champion piper, was born in Sudbury in 1942 and was raised in Copper Cliff.
His father, an immigrant from Scotland, arrived in Canada at age 22 from Ayrshire. He left Scotland to escape the coal mines, and ended up working at the Inco smelter. His mother was of United Empire Loyalist descent, mixed English and German heritage. His grandparents came to Canada at relatively advanced ages, and the entire family including Uncle John, also a piper, lived in Copper Cliff.
Life at 18 Orford St. was quite different from that experienced by the folks living in the other parts of town.
“When a culture is left behind by those who emigrate, it often is cherished more than if they had never left. So it was in the Livingstone home: fiddles, bagpipes, songs, step dancing, piano and Scottish music were heard all of the time,” says Livingstone.
He started on the pipes at age four. Well, not the pipes, but a child’s practice chanter. His dad was teaching Ranald, his older brother, the pipes, and it was easier to involve him in the lessons, than to put up with his constant interference.
At age 17, he drifted away from the pipes and took up piano and rock 'n' roll. His band, The Coppertone's, played throughout the Sudbury area for several years, appearing at school dances, and later in local bars.
Every Sunday night the band played at a dance for young people at the Caruso Club.This is where Livingstone met this future wife, Lillian Chillak.
After graduating from Copper Cliff High, Livingstone entered Huntington College, graduating with a BA in psychology.
Livingstone was admitted to Osgoode Hall Law School in September 1965.
After not playing the pipes for 10 years, Livingstone renewed his interest in the bagpipes after hearing the 48th Highlanders Pipe Band performing for a small crowd at the CNE band shell.
He described the experience similar to the relapse of a malaria victim. You think the disease is gone, and then from nowhere, you’re whacked with it again.
He began studying with the great John Wilson in Toronto. In 1972 he went to Scotland to participate in the premier solo piping events in the world. He received tutorage from John MacFadyen, Donald Macleod and Capt. John Maclellan, the greatest pipers of their generation.
In 1973 Livingtone won his first major prize, placing third in piobaireachd (classical bagpipe music) at the Cowal Highland Gathering.
Livingstone was the first North American to many of the top prizes for pipers in Scotland.
His pipe band, the 78th Fraser Highlanders (former General Motors Pipe Band in Oshawa), has won the North American Pipe Band Championship a record 15 times.
The Frasers are a re-creation of a regiment of highlanders raised by Lord Lovat in Scotland to fight against Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham. When the fighting was done, many of the members of the 78th Regiment stayed in Quebec including a significant complement of pipers and drummers. Lord Lovat continues to this day as the chieftain of the Clan Fraser.
In 1987, the 78th Frasers became the first non-Scottish pipe band to win the World Pipe Band Championship.   They have competed at the worlds annually since 1982 and have released six pipe band recordings. Their CD, Live in Ireland, remains the greatest selling pipe band record of all time.
The Frasers are renowned for their groundbreaking innovations in the pipe band world, and are seen as an inspiration for the sound and approach of the modern pipe band.
Livingstone is a prolific composer and has released two books of pipe music. He has recently released Northern Man, a solo piping CD like no other. It features the bagpipe front and centre to be sure, but as only one of the lead instruments. Almost all of the material on the record consists of his own compositions, and the production and arrangements are completely unique to the world of piping. Lush complex arrangements with strings, keyboards, horn sections, flutes, oboes, vocals and even a 12-bar blues for the bagpipe.
This year's Greater Sudbury Celtic Festival & Highland Games will be held May 22 and 23 at Ecole Secondaire du Sacre Coeur on Notre Dame Ave. in the city’s historic Flour Mill district.
This year, the festival will celebrate the Canadian Navel Centennial and 50th anniversaries of the Cape Breton Club and Laurentian University.

Derek Young is the president and producer of the Greater Sudbury Celtic Festival & Highland Games.

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