Diarmaid & Donncha Moynihan launched their CD ‘The Lights of Ranzanico’ at The Corner House last Saturday evening.  Diarmaid is a long time member of the Cork Pipers’ Club having learnt and taught at the club over the years.  He is now based away from Cork so it was great to see him back to launch this CD.   You can listen to clips and purchase the CD over on Diarmaid’s site.

The CD itself is a work of genius combining myriad styles and influences from the well-traveled duo.  I’ve only listened to it a few times and it’s a mark of a great album that each listen brings something new to the fore.  At the launch I was surprised to hear that Diarmaid composed ‘The Ivory Lady’ which has been recorded by Lúnasa on their album ‘Sé’.  It’s certainly a stand-out track on that album as well as on ‘The Lights of Ranzanico’.  The mastery of the Irish traditional musicianship is complemented by artists such as Anxo Lorenzo on Galician gaita, Nic France on drums and Tonyho dos Santos on trumpet.  There are plenty of little nooks and crannies afforded by this diverse range of musicians on a tastefully produced album.

The pair had a whole host of musicians with them on the day including their sister Deirdre, Christy Leahy and Karl Nesbitt.

See some more pictures below.

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Cork Pipers’ Club present our 2010 Tionól on March 20 & 21 at the Wilton SMA Hall in Cork.  Eoin Ó Riabhaigh and Ciaran Ryan will be providing tuition for the pipes classes on the Saturday from 10am-1pm and again after lunch from 2-4.30pm.  Dave Hegarty will provide reedmaking classes at the same times on Saturday and again on Sunday from 10am-12pm to perfect those reeds!

We will hold a session on Saturday March 20 in a nearby pub at which all musicians are welcome.

Please go to the Classes page to register your interest for either beginner or improver classes or the reedmaking course.

Classes at Cork Pipers’ Club start again on Thursday January 21.  Cost for the term of 12 classes is €100 as before. Beginners classes start at 7pm with improvers at 8pm.  Please register your interest on the Classes page.  We have a registration night in Wilton SMA Hall on Thursday January 14 from 7-7.30pm.  That is dependent on weather but we will be in touch with those of you who register interest on the site if we need to postpone the registration night due to bad weather.  Also check back here for any further updates.

We are re-introducing a club membership fee to help pay for running costs of the club.  To this end we will be looking for €20 from each member.  Non-pipers are also more than welcome to join the club.  Please contact us if you are interested.

Last week we had our second session at the Viscount out in Bishopstown.  It has a nice friendly atmosphere and following on from the first session it looks like we found a new home for our sessions.  We’re only there on the last Thursday of the month so if you’re looking for a venue for your own session in Cork this would be a good place to start.

Lots of photos below:

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We had the first session of the term in The Viscount bar in Bishopstown a few weeks ago.  It turned out to be a great night as always and the new venue worked out well.  We should be back there at the end of the month so keep an eye out on the upcoming events on the sidebar or add your name to the mailing list at the top right of the page to get all the latest news straight to your inbox.  We hope to have a session on the last Thursday of every month but check back here for confirmation.  Anyway back to the session, the picture above shows Fearghal, Kevin and John (Mitchell).  John (Murphy) had the pipes …

… and low whistle on hand.

Alex brought along his Galician pipes which certainly made an impression on everybody in the bar!  There’s a great big sound from these but unfortunately Alex is moving away from Cork soon so the next session will be the last one we see him at for a while.

See you at the next session!