Iain MacDonald has long been a highly regarded figure on the Highland and island music scene and internationally, as a piper, flautist and whistle player with Ossian, Battlefield and other bands and as a much sought after producer and teacher – not to mention time spent treading the boards as an actor/musician with theatre companies such as Fir Chlis and 7:84.
One of the formidable trio of piping MacDonald brothers from Glenuig in Moidart, Iain was born on 28 July, 1960, and grew up in what he describes as “a hotbed of traditional music”, with pipers, fiddlers, accordionists and singers from Moidart and beyond calling at the family home in the tiny, Gaelic-speaking village, which was only accessible by foot, horse or boat until 1968 when a road was opened. His father, the local ferryman, played the chanter but was more of a button box player and Gaelic singer, while his mother, who was from South Uist, had piping brothers.
Like his brothers, Allan and Angus, Iain attended Queen Victoria School in Dunblane, where he was taught piping by Pipe Major John M MacKenzie, while further tuition came from such distinguished players as Roderick MacDonald from South Uist (formerly of Glasgow Police Pipe Band), Duncan Johnstone and, from Glenuig itself, Alexander MacDonald (father of Pipe Major Angus MacDonald).
Other influences included piper Duncan Henderson from Acharachle, while playing with the fiddler and button accordionist Farquhar MacRae (who with his siblings Dougie, Donald and Peggy had previously played in the famous Roshven Ceilidh Band) taught the young MacDonald about piping for dancing. During his teens he entered the piping competition circuit, winning the under-18 class at the Northern Meeting in 1976, but didn’t take to the competition scene – in any case, he was touring as a professional musician by the time he was 17.
Arguably more worldly-wise occupations such as fish farming and trawler fishing, both of which he pursued after leaving school, failed to lure him, and at 18 he became a founder member of the first Gaelic theatre company, Fir Chlis, based on Harris.
A year later Mairead Ross, director of Fir Chlis, presented him with a wooden flute and informed him he’d have to play it in their next production, due to open in six weeks. After a couple of weeks he handed it back to her, believing it to be a lost cause, then, beguiled by the playing of the great Irish flautist Matt Molloy on the radio, ordered Molloy’s first album, and noted from the cover that the Irishman appeared to play the same kind of flute which he had so recently rejected. He retrieved it and never looked back.
While he has always played Irish tunes on the pipes – he and his brothers used to come in for criticism from the “Ayatollahs of the piping establishment” for doing so –his piping style, along with that of Allan and Angus, remains essentially “Gaelic” or west Highland.
When local authority funding for Fir Chlis was withdrawn at the beginning of the Eighties, he joined the newly formed folk group Ossian, playing and touring with them for nine years. Extra-curricular activities included co-founding folk-rockers Wolfstone and playing on Ossian bandmate William Jackson’s landmark “folk orchestra” composition The Wellpark Suite, before going on to join the Battlefield Band, in which he formed a powerful front-line with the young fiddler John McCusker.
In 1997 Iain left Battlefield but continued to perform, not least with fiddler Iain MacFarlane from Glenfinnan and with whom he developed a real rapport, captured on their fine album of 2003, The First Harvest. Easing up on the punishing touring schedule with Battlefield gave him more time for production work, which has included acclaimed albums by Julie Fowlis, Dàimh, Kathleen MacInnes and his brother Allan’s recordings with Margaret Stewart.
A former musician-in-residence at the Gaelic college of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye, he is also a visiting tutor at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire, Limerick University and the National Centre of Excellence in Traditional Music in Plockton. He now lives on Benbecula, where he teaches on the Gaelic Language and Music course at Colaisde Bheinn na Faoghla, the Benbecula campus of the University of the Highlands and islands’ Lews Castle College.