Two Brave Hearts Travel to Music’s Highlands

Long before they reached Section 101, Row 8 of Staples Center on Wednesday afternoon, Grammy nominees Alistair Beattie and Barry Deacon realized they faced certain disadvantages in their quest for glory. Their band could offer no wicked backbeat, for instance, and there were no drop-dead beautiful bodies on their videos. There had been no promotional campaign to speak of, and for that matter, precious few actual record sales.

Beattie and Deacon did, however, have kilts. Also fine Glaswegian accents, a modest tale about a Bruckner symphony, and unassailable celebrity connections.

“Madonna’s husband went to the same hairdresser as me, just before their wedding,” Deacon explained soon after his arrival in Los Angeles on Monday. “And my mum is related to Lee Trevino’s caddie. Willie Aitchison.”

Beattie, 57, is a viola player and Deacon, 36, a clarinetist in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. This year, their orchestra, under conductor Osmo Vanska, was among four nominated in Grammy Category 90--best orchestral performance.

This was one of those many prizes awarded in midafternoon on Grammy day, well before the prime-time broadcast. But the Scottish Symphony had never been nominated before, and to seize the moment the BBC approved certain expenditures.

And so across the pond flew the clarinetist and viola player, selected by their 68 peers and joined by orchestra director Hugh Macdonald and a BBC publicist. (Vanska was unavailable.)

On this side, they found clear skies, wobbly logistics and fickle media persons. Clearly, the Scots stood among the Grammy proletariat, far removed from the glitziest headliners, but far from alone. The program included 101 categories, from best polka album to best spoken word album for children, with five nominees in most categories.

At least to begin with, the Scots took it all in stride, unfazed by pop music machinery, the celebrity scene, even the cost of admission. In the wake of confusion among the Grammy organization, their record label and the orchestra, the BBC had to pay for the musicians to get into the awards ceremony. Choosing some of the costliest seats on the chance that they’d need to approach the podium, they paid $800 per man.

A Grammy Fishbowl,

an L.A. Melting Pot

True, they were a bit shaken the first two times that mix-ups kept them separated from those tickets. And in their category, they knew the competition was stiff: the mighty Berlin Philharmonic (nominated twice, for one recording under Claudio Abbado and another under Kent Nagano), the esteemed Chicago Symphony Orchestra (under Pierre Boulez) and the estimable if less widely celebrated Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (under Jose Serebrier). But they had a mission, and as surely as the Firth of Forth is wet and bisected by a bridge, they aimed to complete it. Arriving on Monday night and due to leave today, they had less than 72 hours to swim bravely in the strange fishbowl that is the Grammys.

On Monday night, as movers and shakers gathered at the Century Plaza Hotel for a tribute to Billy Joel, Beattie and Deacon, cleared customs, grabbed pasta at their hotel restaurant and slept.

The next day, daunted by limousine prices, publicist Lyn McNicol hired the group a taxi for the day, giving driver Asefa Pekade, formerly of Ethiopia, a 10-hour fare of $300, plus tip. The first stop: publicity photos, in kilts, at a park in front of the Hollywood sign. Then, maybe a radio station, a TV interview, a photo op with fellow Scot Rod Stewart.

“Your kilts are in shadow,” warned the photographer, hired the day before to transmit images back to newspapers in Scotland.

“Do something sort of Scottish,” counseled the publicist.

This mostly involved flinging hands skyward and careful kilt management. Each of their kilts--typically worn for weddings and other formal occasions--carried a different clan tartan pattern. Deacon’s, borrowed from a friend, was green, blue and red; Beattie’s had yellow as well. In addition, each wore a sporran--a small, fur-lined quasi-wallet that hung at waist level. They posed for the photographer and for each other and then, having come from a territory of 200 rainy days a year, gazed a bit more at the sun-splashed Hollywood Hills.

Beattie and Deacon had not just fallen off the haggis truck. In fact, the Scottish orchestra has won two Gramophone Awards--London-based prizes that carry more clout than any others in classical music--in the last decade and was nominated last week for a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award as the United Kingdom’s orchestra of the year. Since November 2000, the orchestra’s touring schedule has included performances in Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Boston, Philadelphia and Zanesville, Ohio.

“I can honestly say that we’ll never forget Zanesville, Ohio,” said Beattie, and Deacon nodded immediately, leaving the details unclear.

The two made a complementary couple. Beattie, tall and senatorial, has been in the orchestra since 1970. Deacon, who joined the orchestra in 2000, sported Bart Simpson cufflinks and spoke with great confidence of how the kilt might help him sweet-talk Britney Spears.

“I’ve got the headline already,” he said. “Britney’s Highland Fling.”

Beattie was under orders from his son to buy a certain model of trendy tennis shoes. Deacon hoped for a bit of browsing in a big CD store.

The 70-member Scottish orchestra, led for the last five years by Finnish conductor Vanska, makes its performing home in Glasgow City Hall, and it is known for its broad repertoire. The Grammy nomination was for the orchestra’s recording of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3 in D minor on London-based Hyperion Records.

That symphony, written by the Austrian composer in the 1870s as an hommage to Wagner, is full of exposed moments for individual instrumentals--no orchestral stroll in the park.

Estimated sales of the recording? Probably more than 5,000, said Macdonald, the orchestra director, and probably fewer than 15,000. Though the number seems small by pop standards, Macdonald added, he takes them as encouraging at a time when many record companies are reducing their commitment to classical music.

By lunchtime Tuesday, when record industry insiders were gathering at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel to hear a keynote address by Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Assn. of America, the Scots were at the Getty Center, marveling at Van Gogh, Turner, Monet and Manet and dealing further with the kilt effect.

“OK,” said a female docent as they passed a fountain area, “so are you really from Scotland or was this a bet?”

Then as they took in the balcony view of the Pacific, a grinning African American man, at least 6-foot-6, stepped up to introduce himself.

“I’m a McPhaul from Detroit,” he began. “And we’re long-distance cousins.”

Then Kenneth J. McPhaul Jr.--a jazz fan from Detroit who was also visiting town for the Grammys--explained that after winning their freedom in the 19th century, his ancestors were taken in by a Scottish American family named McPhaul and took on that family name.

The museum, the view, the great American melting-pot moment--the Scots were wide-eyed. Even when the publicist broke news that the radio and television interviews had fallen through, even when their office visit to pick up their Grammy tickets proved unproductive, the momentum seemed clear. The awards were now less than 24 hours away.

Then came tea and shortbread with British Consul General Peter Hunt, an evening Grammy nominees party at the California Science Center in Exposition Park, a brief radio interview for “Good Morning, Scotland.”

The Science Center gathering was not the evening’s prime party: Clive Davis, head of J Records, was hosting that at the Beverly Hills Hotel. But this wasn’t a bad consolation. As lights danced on the museum walls, a waitress sidled up to Deacon with a variation on the usual kilt question:

“Briefs or boxers?” she asked

“Neither,” he answered.

But too soon she was gone.

Finally, Time for the Trip Along the Red Carpet

In the end, the Scots didn’t lay hands on their Grammy tickets until the morning of the ceremony, and to do so, they had to drive back out to the recording academy office in Santa Monica and stand in line for nearly an hour. On the way back, they stopped to drop off a CD at a local classical radio station.

Then suddenly the Grammy hour was nigh, and the Scots were donning their kilts again, tucking binoculars into their sporrans.

“Tie all right?” asked Beattie, inspecting himself.

“Should I have brought pants?” asked Deacon. “In case I’m searched?”

They caught a taxi to the arena, then had to abandon it, while those who came in limos with security clearance passed by. They walked the last block, then stepped up to the red carpet, with an encouraging pause for a TV interview. Then into the hall.

They entered, they sat, they waited. And about half an hour into the program, the presenters delivered the verdict.

Chicago. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, playing Varese under the baton of Boulez, won the best orchestral performance Grammy.

The Scots took a breath, made a phone call to alert their publicist, then stepped away from their seats for a bit to stretch their legs. For the next five hours, sure as Braveheart was born in Renfrewshire, other people would be winning prizes.

Still, after that would be the post-awards party, and a little time for shopping in the morning--and that photo op with Rod Stewart, it wasn’t entirely out of the question yet.