Any instrument will do, she said cheerfully, expecting her young son to choose piano, guitar, or perhaps the saxaphone.

Reber immediately offered that he would like to play the bagpipes. His mother was dumbfounded. Bagpiping? How would she find an instructor in their Swiss town of La Chaux-de-Fonds? The subject of musical instruments wasn't brought up again.

But Reber's dream of playing the pipes didn't fade. When he moved to the United States 10 years ago, he found a bagpipe teacher and began the arduous task of learning to make music with the temperamental one-octave instrument.

"It was extremely frustrating, but the more you practice, the better you get," said Reber, who earned a master's degree in international relations from USC in 2000 and now is pursuing a Ph.D., studying Middle East security issues.

So how did a native of Switzerland get the bagpiping bug in the first place?

"I can't remember when it bit. The pipes just stir something within me. I love history, and I love piping," Reber said. "There's an old saying that every time you play the pipes, you can hear generations from long ago."

Perhaps it's in his genes. His middle name, after all, is MacLellan; a tribute to long-ago ancestors on his mother's side who called Scotland their home. Reber usually wears the green-and-black plaid Gordon kilt and the Gordon crest on his Glengarry, the woolen pleated cap worn by Scottish bagpipers.

The ribbons that hang down the back of the Glengarry typically are tied in a bow for married pipers and left untied by bachelors. "I'm engaged, so I'm not sure what I should do with mine; maybe twist them?" Reber said. His fiancée, an elementary school teacher, also is a piper; she plays in the Palmetto Pipes and Drums band with Reber and several other piping enthusiasts.

To practice for his many bagpiping engagements with the band and at weddings and funerals, Reber usually plays on the Horseshoe two or three times each week. These later afternoon piping sessions often draw curious looks and appreciative words from onlookers.

"Quite a lot of people who are walking past sit down and listen. Some come up and want to talk when I'm finished playing a song," he said.

On this sunny October afternoon it's time for more practice. His left arm flexes the bag that supplies air to a bass drone, two tenor drones, and the eight-holed chanter. Soon, the lyrical trilling of the bagpipes is wafting across the Horseshoe, echoing the music of generations from long ago.

11/01