A Celtic Christmas Featuring Eric Rigler Comes To Soka University

By John Roos

Bagpiper Eric Rigler has over the years put his stamp on some of Hollywood’s biggest movies, including Braveheart, Titanic, Master and Commander, Road to Perdition, Million Dollar Baby, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Fugitive, and Cinderella Man, among others. But if his film soundtrack contributions are your only exposure to Rigler, it’s merely the tip of the iceberg over a 30-year career that blurs the boundaries of traditional Celtic music.

The Los Angeles-based Rigler plays a variety of classic Celtic instruments, including the Scottish bagpipes, Irish uilleann (pronounced “ill-in”) pipes, and the Irish tin and low whistles. His career gained some traction early when he won the California state amateur championship while in his early-teens, which prompted extended trips to Scotland to study further and take advantage of new competitive piping opportunities. While abroad, Rigler was especially mesmerized by the mysterious, complex sounds of the uilleann pipes.

“After playing the Scottish pipes, I fell in love with the sound of the uilleann because it was more expressive and had more range than the Scottish,” recalled Rigler during a recent phone interview. “The Scottish pipe has only one octave while the uilleann has two full octaves in ‘D’ and chromatic possibilities, too, so you can play a lot of different keys while sliding between notes. Playing this (instrument) became almost an obsession with me.”

Even though Rigler is devoted to the preservation of traditional Celtic music, he’s a visionary with the drive to transport this music into places where they were never intended to be. “I come from a trad(itional) music background but I’ve always been intrigued by how the pipes fit into other genres of music,” said Rigler. “It’s this feeling of discovery that gets down deep into your soul and that’s been a part of me since the beginning.”

For example, Rigler has played in a mostly-acoustic group named Skyedance, which plays a fusion of jazz/Celtic/world music; and similar to the Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly, his current alter-ego group, Bad Haggis, plunks Rigler into the heart of a rock-leaning sound that seamlessly blends Celtic pipes and whistles with crunching, punk-like electric guitar, bass and drums. Pretty cool stuff.

Still seeking new challenges, Rigler established a partnership in 2014 with guitarist Dirk Freymuth (John Gorka, Kottonmouth Kings, Enrique Toussaint) to experiment further with re-inventing Celtic music traditions by adding layers of electronically-generated soundscapes.

A year later the duo released “Belgrove Road,” an engrossing collection of traditional and original compositions using looping pedals, effects processors, and other modern musical gadgetry to infuse Celtic music with a breath of fresh air and a more sweeping, cinematic sound. Rigler and Freymuth continued their collaboration with last year’s “Live on PBS SoCal, Celtic Journeys: Songs and Soundtracks,” which presents the duo-plus fiddler Wanda Law and vocalist Nuala Kennedy—performing a mixture of soundtrack music, traditional Celtic songs, jigs and reels, and original, electronically-enhanced numbers.

“I’m always looking for ways to make my instruments as emotional and ethereal as possible,” said Rigler. “Dirk and I are able to create a more orchestral sound using technology so we can step on a button (or pedal) to play back and create arrangements on the fly. It’s turned out to be a real problem-solver for me playing live because I can layer the film soundtracks without using an orchestra.”

The quartet of Rigler, Freymuth, Law and Kennedy will be performing two shows of “A Celtic Christmas” Sunday at Soka University in Aliso Viejo. According to Rigler, the audience can expect a bit of the unexpected from a set list designed to take the listener on ‘a journey to where they’re floating from up above.’ (For a sampling, go to: www.pipesandguitar.com/video/)

“We will play some of the soundtrack material and Christmas songs everyone will know but there are some really beautiful songs that people may be unfamiliar with,” he said. “We’ll perform some pieces from the northwest of Scotland . . . . across to County Wexford (Ireland) . . . . and on to the Brittany Celtic region in the northwest of France.” Rigler is also looking forward to sharing not only his Scottish and Irish piping but some exotic Gaida bagpipe music from Bulgaria and the Galician from northwest of Spain as well.

“These gigs with Dirk are the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Rigler insisted. “There’s just such a huge amount going on because we’re creating in the moment, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘what’s my next part . . . what button do I step on next?’ But at the end of the day, you can’t be a robot. You have to play real music and this creative process is so rewarding because we keep getting deeper and deeper into it.”

Because of the demand for his studio session and TV and movie soundtrack work, Rigler is now billed by publicists and promoters as “The World’s Most Recorded Piper.” Not too shabby for the kid who was immersed in the sun-and-surf culture of Southern California.

“I would sneak off to my bedroom to play the pipes, and my mom would tell me to do my homework, that music was just a hobby,” recalled Rigler. “But even then in the back of my mind I thought that maybe I could do this as a career.”

Perseverance has indeed paid off. And honestly, who better than Rigler to usher this music out of the cozy Irish pubs for the masses to enjoy?

“Celtic music used to be irrelevant until St. Patrick’s Day rolled around once a year,” Rigler added. “What’s so exciting to me is that’s no longer true because this timeless music is a living, breathing tradition that’s embraced everywhere year-round.”

*A Celtic Christmas with Eric Rigler & Dirk Freymuth plus Nuala Kennedy and Wanda Law, plays Sunday at Soka University, Performing Arts Center, 1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo. 7 p.m. (The 3 p.m. show is sold-out); 949-480-4000. $25-$40. www.soka.edu.