A Pipe Orchestra

I obtained further musical training and became a professional musician. After mastering various musical instruments, I learned to play the pipe. Once, I repaired a small pipe made of bamboo. In time, I learned to make my own pipes. At the time, the experts did not think pipes could be made that would produce bass notes, since the large size of the pipes would mean that the sound would be too soft. That was why there were no pipe orchestras.

However, I managed to construct a pipe with a special resonator that intensified the sound. This meant that pipes with low bass notes could be made without losing sound volume. In time, I began to make different sets, or families, of pipes that could produce complex harmonies.

Previously, I had organized orchestras made up of traditional musical instruments. One of my orchestras was composed of only blind musicians. Then, in 1960, I organized an orchestra that played exclusively on pipes​—the only one of its kind in the Soviet Union and possibly the world.

In 1981, I moved from Kam’yanets’-Podil’s’kyy, where I had spent 35 years, to Yoshkar-Ola, about 400 miles [600 km] east of Moscow. There I continued my creative activities. One of my orchestras had 45 members who played a variety of pipes. These ranged from an eight-inch-long [20 cm] high-pitched pipe less than a half inch [1 cm] in diameter to a more than nine-foot-tall [3 m] double-bass pipe eight inches [20 cm] in diameter. Our concerts were broadcast by radio and television, and we performed throughout the country.

In a 1986 contest that involved musical groups from all over the Soviet Union, I received a certificate and a medal for developing the art of the pipe. Years later a documentary movie entitled Solo for Pipe, or the Fairy Tale of a Musician was produced. The newspaper Mariiskaya Pravda reported: “Boris Nikolaievich Gulashevsky, who is featured in this movie, received a special certificate for being the originator of a pipe orchestra that is the only one of its kind in Russia.”

[Picture on page 20, 21]

A pipe orchestra