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.

Another year down, another pipers’ concert at the Spailpin for the Cork Folk Festival.  But what a concert we had this year!  Some familiar faces graced the stage including Dan O’Callaghan, Diarmaid Moynihan with a welcome return from Tomás O Canainn who, for me, was the highlight of the show with his piping, singing, stories, jokes and poetry!  This year also saw Kevin Moore make an accomplished stage debut, the first of many appearances in the coming years here I’m sure.  The variety of musicians and instruments is what made this year’s concert all the more special for me.  We had uilleann pipes, Galician pipes (gaita), pan pipes, war pipes, flutes, low whistles, and guitars.  In particular Anxo Lorenzo who you can see above with the Moynihans blew us away with the sweet sound of his Galician pipes.  Finally, it was great to meet the wonderful piper Jimmy Morrison who kicked off the show with some fine sets.  Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of him myself but I’m sure we’ll get a few in from our official photographer on the day (ahem John ).

I recorded the gig so expect to see some mp3s posted here in the coming days.

See the photos from the show below…

Click to continue »

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!

Kevin Crawford and Cillian Vallely played a cracking gig upstairs in An Crúibín back in the middle of June.  They were joined onstage by Paul Meehan on guitar, the latest guitarist in Lúnasa.  Kevin and Cillian were touring to launch their album ‘On Common Ground‘ from which they played a lot of sets on the night.  It’s a very strong album and is a worthy addition to any album collection.  Kevin and Cillian mix things up well when they play low whistles on one of my favourite tracks ‘Man from Moyasta’ with a nice intro on the guitar.  Check out this review of the album for more info.

On the night, Niall Vallely joined the lads on stage with his concertina for a few final tunes.  I look forward to the next time they come back to Cork!

There a few more photos in the full set in my Flickr account.

In the very near future we will be adding a new section to the site with the tunes taught in the classes so that a repertoire is built up over time which students can come back to for reference.  A big problem with the aural teaching of tunes is that certain tunes may be forgotten over time if not played regularly.  While traditional music is best taught by ear in my opinion, it is always good to have a reference point for tunes.  The publication of our tunes will also enable other pipers to learn the same tunes that are taught in our classes.  Not everybody is lucky enough to live in Cork!

In the meantime, check out The Session website which is a wondeful resource for tunes.  It is well worth signing up on that site as you can bookmark tunes and buiild up your own library.  The North-West Uilleann Pipers also have a great set of piping tunes on their teaching downloads page.