About the Berkshire Highlanders
“Pittsfield Needs a Pipe Band” At least, that was the claim of a small display ad that appeared in April 1976, in the Berkshire Eagle. The ad drew a group of about 30 potential pipers and drummers, but their numbers quickly dwindled to only four or five when they learned the investment in time, effort, and money that was required to become a pipe band musician.
From those modest beginnings in the bicentennial year, the group grew rapidly, ultimately achieving not just local, but international recognition. In April 1977, just one year after most of its members first saw a set of pipes, the band, along with its instructor Donald Lindsay, and another Lindsay-founded pipe band from nearby New York performed in concert at Berkshire Community College. At Eastover Resort in Lenox, founder George Bisacca, always intrigued by the unusual, signed up the band to march with his contingent in the 1977 Lenox 4th of July Parade.
Concerts
Earlier that year, the band had approached the Boston Symphony Orchestra about the possibility of playing at the BSO’s Tanglewood summer concert festival. After the Lenox parade, the BSO called, and engaged the Highlanders to play at its Tanglewood-on-Parade celebration. This became a cherished band performance for more than 25 years. Other major band performances at Tanglewood have included a Celtic night with the Boston Pops and a broadcast with Garrison Keillor on his Prairie Home Companion show on the National Public Radio network. In other classic performances, the band entertained music lovers at the Annual Gala of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (in conjunction with the New York City Ballet), and at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Other special concerts have been at the Clark Art Museum in Williamstown, Naumkeag in Stockbridge, and the United States Military Academy, West Point.
Season
From St. Patrick’s Day in March to Columbus Day in October, the band marches and plays in a splendid array of college graduations and alumni reunions, patriotic ceremonies, fund-raisers and benefits, Highland games and gatherings, fairs and firemen musters, and such one-time engagements as the inauguration ceremony for a Massachusetts governor. In addition to maintaining this demanding schedule, individual pipers and small groups also perform at weddings, funerals, and other occasions where a full band may not be appropriate. If you have an event you would like to see the Berkshire Pipe Band at please contact us.
Instructors
Since 1984, Nancy Crutcher Tunnicliffe has been the band's instructor. Ms. Tunnicliffe’s nationally televised appearance with the Boston Pops Orchestra helped to make her America's most-recognized highland piper. She has performed throughout the United States and Scotland, where she was a featured performer at the Lockerbie memorial concert and competed, by invitation, at the world’s premier piping event, the Northern Meeting, in Inverness. Ms. Tunnicliffe, who is currently a judge with the Eastern U.S. Pipe Band Association, has been featured in more than 100 radio and television programs in 30 U.S. cities. Beginning in 2003, Norman McLeod, EUSPBA drumming judge, has provided instruction to the band's drummers.
Music and Attire
Piper Bill Powers, one of the Berkshire Highlanders founding members, designed the band’s cap badge. The badge features the War Memorial Tower, a tapered, cylindrical stone tower that stands atop Berkshire County’s Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Massachusetts. Surrounding the tower on the badge is the Gaelic motto: "Is Fion Milis Ceol." This roughly translates as: "Music is sweet wine."
Powers also designed the band’s tartan and had it registered with the Scottish Tartans Society, the governing body for tartans, worldwide. The record of the band’s tartan, which is named Greylock, for the mountain previously mentioned, can be found at the society’s web site. The registration number for the Greylock tartan is TS944. Powers chose as the tartan's two main colors the blue of the Berkshire skies and the green of its forested mountains. The secondary stripes include red and yellow, representing the spectacular fall foliage, and white, for the 75 inches of snow that falls here during an average winter. (Unofficially, the black stripe may represent the mood of local residents after enduring one of these winters.)
Another founding member and piper, the late John Lloyd, composed the Berkshire Highlanders March, the band’s signature tune. Almost invariably, this is the tune a listener first hears when the band begins a concert or steps off in a parade. During the years that the band was active in pipe-band competitions, the tune also was our victory salute. For example, it signified the band's designation as the Best Pipe Band in America's Hometown 4th of July Parade, which in 1992 was televised internationally on PBS and the Armed Forces Television Network.
