When Matthew O’Connor was a child, one of his favorite parts of the St. Patrick’s Day parades that he attended with family was seeing the bagpipers march by.
Despite this appreciation, O’Connor, who lives in Holyoke, did not pick up the bagpipes himself for many years, unsure of where or how to start. But at 48, O’Connor has been a bagpiper for about 23 years, the second-longest member of the Springfield Kiltie Band, and a regular in parades himself.
“Although my parents are American-born, we just always loved and respected our Irish and Scottish, Celtic heritage,” O’Connor recalled, adding that St. Patrick’s Day was always “huge” in his family.
O’Connor’s interest in playing the bagpipes became a reality when he was 25, shortly after he attended an Irish music festival in Newport, Rhode Island. During a conversation with a man selling kilts, O’Connor mentioned that he was from western Massachusetts. The man told him that the Springfield Kiltie Band offered to teach aspiring bagpipers for free, and O’Connor went to join the group within the next few days.
While bagpipes are known for the pipe bags that they draw their name from, students typically start out on a practice chanter — a tubular woodwind piece that O’Connor compares to a recorder. Students usually practice on the chanter for one to two years before taking on a full set of bagpipes, O’Connor said, although all players continue to practice on the chanter throughout their musical careers.
Almost 25 years after first taking on the chanter, O’Connor still meets with the same Kiltie Band each week at the John Boyle O’Reilly Club, where the group practices for two hours every Monday. The Kiltie Band continues to teach the bagpipes to all who are interested, free of charge.
O’Connor plays around 30 to 35 gigs with the group each year, in addition to about 20 solo gigs per year at events such as weddings, funerals and celebrations. By day, he works at the South Hadley Department of Public Works.
Over the years, O’Connor said that a “sheer love” of the instrument, as well as his ancestral connection to the instrument, has kept him playing the bagpipes.
“It’s like looking back in time, being an ancient piper and still dressing in the kilt and the regalia,” O’Connor said of playing the bagpipes. “It just kind of puts me in touch with ancestry and ancient times.”
Jacquelyn Voghel can be reached at jvoghel@gazettenet.com.