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A gracious recommendation from Catherine McEvoy and I was on the phone with Ingeborg Schrewentigges, president of the Deutsche Uilleann Pipe Gesellschaft. We spoke briefly about the tionol the evening before Kate, my dad and I were to fly over to Amsterdam.
Two months later, on Thursday, April 5, Kate and I found ourselves cruising Bus Eireann on the way to Dublin to catch our flight to Frankfurt-am-Main. We met Catherine and Tom McGorman and John and Jacinda McEvoy at Dublin airport and boarded our flight.
After nine hours of traveling, we reached our destination. Ingeborg, Kristian, and Manuel greeted us jovially at the airport. Having drawn straws as to who would ride with whom, we climbed into Manuel’s car and pulled onto the Autobahn bound for Burg Fürsteneck just outside the small town of Fulda.
Easter weekend traffic added another hour to our journey in the dark, but after three hours, we reached the castle. Here’s a bit of history on the 14th-century castle.
1309
Toward end of the 13th Century, the castle was probably built under the prince abbott Heinrich V. of Weilnau as border attachment of the high pin Fulda (Ersterwaehnung 1309). Due to incessant money concerns became the office prince-hit a corner to in 16th Century inside surrendered to changing gentlemen.
1324
Verpfaendung of the office at Berthold of meadow field.
1358
Hiring of castle and office at petrols of Buchenau.
1440
Sales to the monastery Hersfeld.
1450
Sales of castle and surrounding countryside for 910 guldens to "of the Tann".
1460
The Fuldaer abbott sets Hans of the Tann as an office man on prince-hits a corner in.
1463
Count Heinrich von Henneberg fails with the attempt, CASTLE PRINCE-HITS A CORNER to conquer.
1532
Fulda redeems the castle. From then on only fuldische office people sit on prince-hit a corner.
In any case, we arrived in one piece and were greeted by many friendly faces. After some cold meats and cheeses and beer (on the honor system), we were shown up to our room in the Herrenhaus. The room was stunningly large and completely renovated. The efficiency of all the designs from the door locks to the shower head was quite impressive. Light streamed through the surrounding windows each morning onto the thing pine-timber floor boards.
Despite the animated session in the beer room, I knocked off early to get a sound night’s rest. I definitely prefer to teach well-rested as it takes quite a bit of energy and concentration.
The breakfast that greeted us was satisfying: bread, cheese, cold meats, condensed milk for kaffe, and various types of marmalades. Ingeborg directed me to my classroom and I went to retrieve the pipes from our room.
There were three students in the class from various parts of the country. My understanding was that there were nearly 50 pipers in attendance, but because of the huge class sizes from the previous tionol, most had elected to take a secondary instrument as learning can be challenging and intimidating in large groups. In any case, the three students present were able to receive a lot of personalized attention.
The teaching schedule was fairly relaxed totaling some three hours per day. It seems like they’ve discovered that music making is much more pleasant when there is unstructured time in which to do so.
After the first tune was taught, I went downstairs to the reedmaking workshop to visit Andreas to see if he could make a few minor repairs on my set, namely replace cork, tweak reeds, and seal a leak in the bass regulator. These fixes he gladly made, and after lunch I showed the class Gerdy Commane’s Jig.
I returned downstairs where I noticed Heike adjusting her own pipes off in a corner. Jackie Small had introduced us the previous night: Heike had turned down the wood and mounts for my drones and regulators. She had been working with Andreas for over seventeen years.
I walked up and asked her a few questions about her set (made by herself of course). “I’m looking forward to hearing you in the concert tomorrow [Saturday] night,” she said. “Would you like to hear them now?” I asked. I figured she’d want to hear the set she’d made played by the owner. I played a few sets of tunes while she and Andreas looked on. I thanked them profusely between tunes. The full B set they made for me truly is marvelous. It worked outstandingly for me in the recording studio just a few weeks ago and every concert I do, they seem to work straight out the box with little tuning required.
Kate came down and listened for a while and we headed up to dinner. That evening we found ourselves in a session in the auditorium with Jens, Siobhan, Catherine, Tom, and Jacinda. When I crawled out at 2:30am, the music was still going strong. 23 years old and I’m already too old!
The next morning I taught the class The Satin Slipper. After lunch, Kate and I went for a walk around the castle. We ended up finding some rare flowers around the perimeter walls.
The evening’s concert went quite well with John and Catherine teaming up to do a few sets off their “Kilmore Fancy” recording. John went to play a solo and mentioned, “This tune that I’m about to play is a very important tune. It was one of the last ones recorded by Michael Coleman.” Tom, Jacinda, Siobhan, and Jens came up join us on the last set.
The next day, we said farewell to the German contingent and headed back to Frankfurt airport.
Ausfhart!
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Die Deutsche Uilleann Pipe Gesellschaft Tionol
