PIANIST, composer, arranger and one of the most sought after musicians in the Highlands and beyond, Andy Thorburn’s genre-hopping musical journey reflects his geographically expansive life story, encompassing everything from classical to jazz, rock and folk and much more besides.
Over the past three decades, Andy has established himself as keyboard player of choice for many projects, writing tunes that have entered the “traditional” repertoire, leading big-band swing, composing Gaelic choral works and other large-ensemble pieces and playing with such high-powered traditional and folk-fusion outfits as Blazin’ Fiddles, the Ghillies and Babelfish. He also teaches widely and is a government adviser on music curriculum development in schools.
The man once described by Norman Chalmers as “Easter Ross’s answer to Dr John” was born in London, soon moving to Lancashire where he began piano lessons at the age of five and quickly showed considerable aptitude, which led to an early immersion in choral harmony when he became a boy chorister in an Oxford college choir.
Not for long, however, as the next family move was to Los Angeles, where Andy finished high school and started college just in time for flower power, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, the Grateful Dead and other counter-culture musical delights. He took up skiing and landed his first job playing in a band which, following his hitherto classical musical education, proved a revelation in terms of the sociability and fun of music-making.
The looming shadow of the Vietnam Draft prompted Andy’s return to the UK and a Bachelor of Education Degree at Leeds University, where, in a foretaste of later accomplishments as a teacher, his dissertation subject was Music as a Language of Expression in Young Children.
He arrived in Scotland for the first time in 1978, working as a gardener on a Banffshire estate and qualifying as a ski instructor. Locals invited him along to pub sessions and he discovered Scottish traditional music. “It was the whole social side of that culture which was the real magic for me,” he later wrote, “the way people just joined in together, the lack of protocol – that’s very important for me in music. I like music that’s rhythmic and fun and exciting, and not over-complicated, whether it’s trad or rock ‘n’ roll. I like accessibility.”
Further travel, to Austria and Norway then several years in Canada (where he played with country, blues and rock bands), would intervene before he returned to Scotland in 1987, settling in Edinburgh where he ran a music services business for five years while immersing himself in the capital’s pub session scene. He also developed his hi-tech skills, having studied computers in Canada and possessing one of the first Apple Macs in Scotland, and was soon in demand for everything from advertising jingles to wedding CDs.
He also developed his skills as a creative musical manuscript setter, going on to typeset many music books, not least the sumptuously presented Runrig songbook, Flower of the West.
Returning north, he settled in his present home outside Inverness. As his reputation spread, the next decade saw Andy embark on a bewildering range of projects. He played with groups such as Wolfstone, Mouth Music, Salsa Celtica and an early version of Ceolbeg, as well as the Edinburgh alt-folk band Eat the Seats, then joined Blazin’ Fiddles, for whom he would provide keyboards for 17 years. He developed close playing relationships with two much missed musicians, Ian Hardie of the Ghillies and Davy Steele in Ceolbeg. It was also in the latter band that he first accompanied a piper, Gary West – both would later become external examiners at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
He struck up a lasting working relationship with the Grey Coast Theatre Company, formed in Caithness by playwright George Gunn, and from which emerged one of his most widely played tunes, Marnie Swanson of the Grey Coast. In a different genre altogether, he joined – and continues to lead – the expansively good-time Loveboat Big Band, while in 1993 a production of Cinderella at Inverness’s Eden Court Theatre, for which he wrote the music, was virtually sold out for its seven-week run.
In 1999, having been commissioned to write a “New Voices” piece for Celtic Connections, he came up with the widely acclaimed Tuath gu Deas – “North to South”, a choral work written in Gaelic, Scots, English and Latin with lyrics by Aonghas MacNeacail. The work was reprised last year in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum. Andy followed that with Highland Wedding, which saw 250 Scottish schoolchildren performing in London’s Millennium Dome, while in Gluaseachd an Chuain Siar he worked with seven leading Gaelic singers for the opening of the 2003 HebCelt festival. He was also musical director for the “Gaelic opera” Hiort, about St Kilda, which was transmitted live throughout Europe from Stornoway.
Having discovered a fine Steinway piano in Ackergill Tower, a 15th century castle clinging to a clifftop near Wick, in 2005 he used it to record his solo album Piano, largely featuring his own compositions.
More recently, he’s been playing in Damian Halliwell’s band Metta while, at the time of writing, he was musical director of an epic outdoor production of Macbeth at Brodie Castle near Forres. His score was being performed by choirs, a rock band, drummer, saxophonist and piper. He teaches piano at the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music at Plockton and is currently writing Andy’s Handy Music Book, which he describes as a “how to” manual on learning music for both general and specialist use.
Amid all this, he insists, he still finds time for working at the tatties and hillwalking.