Something to pipe about

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Simon Fraser University
Public Affairs and Media Relations (PAMR)
604.291.3210 www.sfu.ca/mediapr

Contact: Terry Lee, 604.936.8548, terry@tartan.com
Jack Lee, 604.936.8548, jack.lee@shaw.ca

Carol Thorbes, pamr, 604.291.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca

One is an accountant, the other is a retail store manager, but you put brothers Jack and Terry Lee in kilts and give them bagpipes, and you’ve got world-class musicians with something to pipe about.

Jack, a Surrey accountant, and Terry, a Coquitlam resident and co-owner of Tartan Town, are co-founders of the four-time, world champion SFU Grade 1 (senior) Pipe Band. They’ll be celebrating the band’s 25th anniversary on Thursday, August 3 at an invitation-only (open to the media) gala dinner at the Diamond Alumni Centre at SFU Burnaby.

A new 10 minute video, featuring interviews with Jack (pipe sergeant and band manager), Terry (pipe major) and Reid Maxwell (drum sergeant), will premier. The video recaps the band’s quarter century of globe trotting, its world piping championship wins in Scotland and its performances in famous venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall.

The Lee brothers reminisce fondly about their creation of six bands from one, and the cultivation of their youngest members in the Robert Malcolm Memorial Junior Pipe Band. For Terry, one of the highlights has been “doing the double. Winning the world’s senior and juvenile class competitions in 1999 and 2001 was very sweet both times.”

George Pederson, SFU president in 1981 when the university officially transformed a grassroots pipe band into the SFU Pipe Band with the wave of a pen, makes this now famous comment on the tape. “How can you have a university called Simon Fraser without a pipe band?”

In preparation for their August 12 competition at this year’s world piping championship in Glasgow, Scotland, the Grade 1 band will take to Burnaby Mountain Park at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, July 27. The public is welcome to hear the band’s rehearsal on the mountain.

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