For Her Senior Project, a Pianist Took Up Bagpipes

A 2026 school magazine story profiled a 2025 graduate's senior Quest. She had played piano since first grade. "One thing about the piano is that so many people at Nueva play," she said. "I wanted to try something that was weird or niche."

Her mother's phone ringtone was "Scotland the Brave." After a chance meeting with a local piper one evening, the vague idea became the bagpipes.

The bagpipe has one volume setting, and it is "field." I cannot stop thinking about the neighbors.

She practiced every day with a private instructor. By January she could play a few tunes, enough for the Quest Expo, and a local pipe band invited her to join. Playing with the band, she said, was when it went beyond Quest, and she loved being one of a whole herd of pipers.

Then she went to Williams College and wasn't sure how bagpipes would go over. She played them at Williams's Mountain Day, the fall tradition. People came up to talk to her about it for weeks, she said. Campus knew her as the bagpipe girl. She takes her lessons over Zoom now and spends time looking for soundproof spaces.

A vague idea, the guidance says. Then lock it in. She did both, and then she took it 3,000 miles, in a case.

The middle one heard this and announced that he would take up the bagpipes. The eldest said she would move out. My wife said nothing, which in our house is a veto. The youngest asked if bagpipes were a kind of animal. The middle one said, sort of.

He has settled on the harmonica. It is loud enough, apparently, to meet his needs, and small enough to fit in a pocket, which I have come to realize is the main problem. It goes everywhere.