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Community Corner

He Proudly Steps to a Different Drummer

PV native and bagpiper Eric Rigler brings the 1,000-year-old instrument to new popularity.

He was two years old, cradled in Mom's arms at a parade, when a kilted bagpipe band came by, the crisp rattle of snare drums and humming whine of alluring,  ancient music indelibly imprinting on his heart, like a clan motto chiseled in granite on a Scottish Highlands peak.

"I do remember that distinctly," said Eric Rigler, who today is the foremost professional bagpiper in the world. "The vivid colors and that incredible sound. ... It made my heart beat faster."

Raised in Palos Verdes Estates, Rigler is self-effacing, 47 and at the pinnacle of his musical career. He reads his bio and long credits sheet occasionally, truly wondering that it could be he who has done all this. He's a modest man.

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He accompanied the London Symphony Orchestra on the soundtrack of "Braveheart."

"There will be major jobs and then nothing  for awhile and then a few modest assignments," he said. "But they do keep coming. ... When I look back  at these credits, I'm amazed."

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He is in demand for world tours and owns all the highest awards from the Celtic nations where piping is a passion and its mastery takes years.

He's a composer as well and founded the world fusion music band "Bad Haggis," while still playing with more traditional Scottish and Irish ensembles.

Compelled by the bagpipes, he begged his parents for lessons at age 3, but he was 7 before the late Dr. Stanley Rigler and his wife Vivian, could find a teacher in the Greater Los Angeles area. He began with the traditional and best-known Great Highland Bagpipe, called by the Irish the War Pipe, for its history leading Scots into battle.

Rigler is also master of Ireland's mellifluous Uillean Pipes, a complex instrument  pronounced "illen" in Gaelic, which is not mouth-blown, but fed air by two  separate bellows under each arm.

As his reputation grew, calls came to accompany renowned male and female recording artists on groundbreaking CDs and music videos.

Rigler has played for episodes of animated TV series "The Simpsons" and "South Park."

Following the success of "Braveheart" and its soundtrack CD, composer John Horner called him again for the soundtrack  of "Titanic," also a commercial musical success. He was then tapped to do "The Prince of  Egypt," working with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. 

There are many other movies that feature his musical mastery of bagpipes.

"I  haven't seen all of them," he admits, "just those I think are going to be good films."

Rigler gets calls from Nashville and London's Abbey Road studios to back a variety of recording artists, on older or now-in-release collections, including Faith Hill, Charlotte Church, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler.

Rigler sets out soon with the Young Dubliners for a cross country U.S. tour, then Europe and Scandinavia, but like many troupers and troubadours find, constant travel gets tedious.

"I'd like to stay home a little more and do more smaller things around L.A.," he said. "More and more people here in L.A. can have the 'Braveheart guy' at their weddings and funerals."

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in 2005, 2007 and 2008 officially honored him as an "L.A. Treasure." 

He's  spent years abroad, but now as a single Dad he has children to finish raising, daughter Tess, 10, and son Ian, 8, who are also musically inclined. Tess plays piano and violin. Ian held out for a more masculine electric guitar, but his father says he's beginning to show interest in the pipes that have made his Dad so famous.

Speaking of  family and heritage, the American-born Rigler was once asked by an interviewer about his ethnic and cultural origins, which surely suggested a strong dose of Scottish genes.

"Nobody knows. I was adopted at birth. I have no idea of those things," he said with a laugh.

Since then, he decided to research his adoption records and discovered that his father had been a love-smitten teenage lad, indeed born in Scotland. He won't pursue further contact, because his loving allegiance is to Dr. Franklin and Vivian Rigler.

Still, it's intriguing, how the tot who remembers how his blood quickened at 2 to the ancient music that lured him to become the best of the best in the land.

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