A girl and her bagpipes

SEDGEWICKVILLE, Mo.

Customers at the McDonald's restaurant in Advance, Mo., little know that the petite blonde 19-year-old getting their Big Mac has studied with some of the best bagpipers in the world. Last summer she was named the outstanding student among 69 pipers at a bagpipe camp at Grandfather Mountain, N.C.

Laurel Martin and her powerful Great Highland bagpipes could curl french fries.

She is the featured entertainment at tonight's concert by the Jackson Municipal Band. She will play a medley of slow airs, marches, a few hymns and possibly a reel or two.

Dressed in a wool kilt, she hopes for a cool night. "It takes a lot of air," Martin says. "I'm always dripping with sweat by the end of a concert."

Martin became interested in making these stirring sounds through "Kirken of the Tartans," a service at her church where people brought their family plaids to be blessed while a bagpipe band played. The sound is beautiful to her.

"And," she says, "I like the way it brings emotions out of people."

College class

She enrolled in a bagpipes class at Mineral Area College three years ago when her family lived in the Lead Belt. Though Martin played the French horn in high school, the bagpipes were a different challenge altogether.

It took six months of practicing before she could squeeze any sounds out of the instrument. "Then it was horrible squeaking," she says.

The daughter of Meadow Heights High School principal Victor Martin and Kathy Fullmer, Martin graduated from Advance High School and works at the McDonald's there because most of her friends live in Advance. She now lives outside Sedgewickville, where the scarce neighbors don't complain because the squeaks of a beginner have disappeared.

Martin put the initial frustration aside and sought the tutelage of world-class pipers. Now she has performed for weddings and a funeral. On Sept. 11, 2001, she played "Amazing Grace" at a memorial service at Advance High School.

She knows a bagpipe player whose repertoire includes Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." But Martin is more of a traditionalist. She always performs in a kilt and never uses sheet music because reading music is considered a sacrilege among pipers.

The Jackson Municipal Band is conducted by Nick Leist. It will perform a collection of Broadway hits, some rumbas and an upbeat "Dry Bones" along with the overture, "Discovery Fantasy."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182