an extraordinary anthology of international bagpipe music

Drone Magic is a unique festival with bagpipe music from around the world and with several pipers performing music and traditions of their own heritage.  From dark laments to fiery dance music, listen to the piping traditions of Spain, Bulgaria, Scotland, Greece, Sweden, and Hungary. 

As always, the Gala Concert featured a variety of piping traditions found around the Winter Solstice. The enthusiastic audience enjoyed Swedish, Hungarian and Croatian traditional Christmas pipe music as well as New Year celebrations from Scotland and the Hungarian Csángó people of Moldavia - bells, horns, rattles, and other noisemakers were distributed to the audience to join in the merry-making!

The afternoon activities included mini concerts, videos, and exhibitions of paintings, photographs, and  bagpipes.   Mark Walstrom opened the Festival with a presentation of his bagpipe collections; Ferenc Tobak and his Family Band performed Hungarian music on bagpipe and other instruments.  In our feature presentation of the afternoon -  our first concert of Lady Pipers - Tesser Call presented the Spanish Gaita, and Karen Guggenheim presented the Bulgarian Gaida.  

This year's Festival included the California debut of talented Hungarian painter, Mihály Jakab.  Jakab brings folk motifs into his contemporary oil paintings of traditional musicians in much the same way Béla Bartók used folk melodies to compose modern music. This year's Drone Magic graphic (above) features a detail of one of Jakab's paintings. A

•  Photographs by Ferenc Tobak taken in Eastern Europe of Hungarian,  Romanian and Gypsy village musicians.

• Bagpipe exhibit showing a variety of instruments from around Europe: from Italy to Estonia and from Ireland to Romania.

• Videos, shown throughout the afternoon and and evening, included "Bulgarian Pipers" by Bruce Cochran,  and films from Mark Walstrom's collection.

Drone Magic" is presented each year in December by Ferenc Tobak of

 "Living The Tradition" in cooperation with the Croatian American Cultural Center.  

Purchase the 

Drone Magic 2003 CD!