• Full-time Professional Bagpiper
• Award-winning Pipe Major and Soloist
• 30+ Years of Performance and Instructional Experience
• Classically Trained Musician

Pipe Major Michel d'Avenas is a classically trained musician and award-winning professional piper with over 30 years performance and instructional experience. He is the Piper Major of the Monterey Bay Pipe Band and the leading bagpipe instructor in Monterey County. He is also a piping competition judge at Scottish Festivals and other events. Michael is the founder of the Monterey Celtic Arts Academy and The Monterey Bay School of Piping and Drumming.

Michel plays a classic set of Great Highland bagpipes. Mounted in ivory with engraved silver and African Blackwood drones, they were manufactured by William Sinclair & Sons of Edinburgh, Scotland. Michel is often seen at sundown playing the pipes at the Inn at Spanish Bay in Pebble Beach.

A Monterey County native, Michel's family came from both Great Britiain and France, and he has a musical heritage that extends through many generations. After graduating from Robert Louis Stevenson School, he served in the U.S. Army Military Police during the Vietnam War era as part of the European Command Honor Guard. He then attended U.C. Berkeley where he studied music theory and composition. Michel studied piping with internationally renowned, championship bagpipe players and instructors, including: Seumas MacNeil, Ian MacFadyen, John Burgess, Archie Cairns, Jimmy MacColl, and Jack Lee. Michel owned and operated a very successful restaurant in Carmel for many years, and is also a real estate broker.

Associations
• Celtic Society of the Monterey Bay
• Monterey Bay Pipe Band
    Piper Major
• Monterey Celtic Arts Academy
• Monterey Bay School of Piping and Drumming
• Western United States Pipe Band Association
• Monterey Scottish Games
    Co-Chair, Piping and Drumming Competition
• Scottish Society of the Monterey Peninsula
    Society Piper

Awards
• Northern California Indoor Champion
• First Place Solo Piping at the Scottish Games in:
  - Santa Rosa
  - Monterey
  - Los Angeles
  - Dunsmire

Previous Pipe Band Memberships
• Culloden Mor - Grade I
• Dunvegan Pipe Bands - Grade I
• Monterey Scottish - Grade III
• First Salinas Valley Highlanders

Special News Profiles
• Monterey County Weekly
• Monterey County Herald
• Salinas Californian
• Carmel Pine Cone