Write and Perform Concerto? It’s in the Bag

Picture a bearded bagpiper as the featured soloist with a full symphony orchestra.

“It was thrilling,” said Kevin Weed, who wrote and then performed his haunting, tuneful and melodic bagpipe concerto with the Garden Grove Symphony Orchestra. “I think the audience was quite taken by it.”

While he fancies classical music, Weed often is hired to play popular songs on his Scottish bagpipe for parties, funerals, weddings and, once, a bar mitzvah.

“It’s a way to make some extra money,” said the Garden Grove resident who relies mainly on his job as a piano accompanist for school districts, colleges, choral groups and dance class musicals for his main income.

“I sometimes get as many as four jobs a month with my bagpipe,” he said. The fee is usually around $100.

Weed said he sometimes gets nervous playing the pipes while dressed in his traditional Scottish costume, which includes kilts.

“Sometimes people just stand around and gawk and I don’t know if they like it,” he said. At other times, “I have to be nervy, especially if I have to stop for gas.”

Besides piano and bagpipe, Weed plays trombone, percussion instruments, harpsichord, pipe organ, folk harp and flute.

“I’ll play any type of music and instrument as long as they pay me to do it,” he said. “I like to listen and produce different sounds. If I hear a car horn I try to figure outthe chord.”

The one-time trombone player for the UCLA marching band said he taught himself to play the bagpipe, first with a chanter, a sort of flute, to learn the finger holes. He didn’t play a bagpipe until he was out of high school.

“I have always wanted to play and perform and be a professional musician,” said Weed, who started playing piano at age 4.

“I’m quite taken by the bagpipe, especially the Scottish ones which have a clear, pristine sound,” he said, pointing out that many countries in Europe and Asia have their own versions of bagpipes.

The Scottish pipes are the biggest and the most famous, says Weed, who has some Irish and Scottish bloodlines.

“Most of the others are rural and rustic types of instruments that never got the fame,” he said, adding that they didn’t look “showy.”

His first bagpipe, made in Pakistan, cost $100, but his Scottish bagpipe cost $500. It was during his early school days that Weed was struck by the bagpipe.

“As a boy I heard a man play the pipe and it didn’t matter that he wasn’t good,” remembers Weed. “I always thought ‘Wow, what a sound!’ ”

While he continues to earn money on his bagpipe and “will always have a bread and butter job,” Weed wants a more lasting career writing music.

“Can I compose music and can I sell it is the question I have to ask myself,” he said. “I know I did a good job in composing the concerto for the bagpipe, but I want to create classical music for symphony work.”

He hopes that includes film and recording studio work.

When he spent months composing his 10-minute concerto for bagpipe, “I really liked working on it. I got depressed when I didn’t have more time to devote to the piece.”

Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Charles Walters just might yell out “bingo” when Mission Viejo Elks Lodge 2444 presents him a $6,500 check to buy a search dog for the department’s canine unit in South Orange County.

The money was raised from bingo, according to Elks bingo chairman Walter Matras.

The funds will go for a 3-year-old Belgian malinois, Elko, pictured above, no doubt named to remind everyone of its roots.