Dunn Family Collection

Uilleann Pipes
1

Nifty!

http://archives.irishfest.com/dunn-family-collection.htm

Patrick.

2

Oy!

3

:wink: :poke:

4

Anybody venture a guess about who made the boxwood bent looking chanter in the instrument collection?
I wish all this was in my family attic. Patrick Dunn (same spelling and all).

5

Brilliant. cheers

6

Thanks for posting the link, Patrick–you beat me to the punch!

As some of you may know, I’m the archivist for the Ward Irish Music Archives in Milwaukee, and I’m happy to report this isn’t meant as a commercial post per se–the Dunn Family Collection website is meant to provide free, open access to material from the collection, including the Francis O’Neill cylinders. Although you may have heard the original cylinder transfers, note that the website has remastered versions courtesy of Harry Bradshaw and Jackie Small. They did some fantastic work adjusting the tracks for pitch and speed, as well as cleaning up the final product overall. A quick note–we decided to present the music in a flash video format in order to highlight other pieces of the collection that correlate to the tunes.

The official launch for the site is tonight at the Milwaukee Irish Fest Summer School. It’s free and open to the public from 7-9pm at the Todd Wehr Conference Center on the MSOE campus. More details here: http://www.facebook.com/irishfest.milwaukee?ref=search#!/event.php?eid=136434949725011&ref=mf

Keep your eyes on the manuscript section of the site in the coming weeks. We’ll be adding more of the notes and other ephemera found in the pages of the O’Neill publications from the collection. Michael J. Dunn stored more hand-written tunes, scales, instrument notes, and even a letter or two within the pages of the tune books in his possession. Some pretty interesting stuff!

–Jeff Ksiazek

7

Jeff and Patrick,

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

Beautiful music!

…and hats off to Bradshaw and Small for doing a most professional job. There are many ways to muck up a job like that, and those boys made only the right decisions!!!

8

Really great. There are some surprises in there such as

  1. Rakish Paddy…without the obvious hanging Cs in the A part. I’ve never warmed to this classic piper tune and never play it solo. This gives me a fresh approach to it.
  2. Death of Staker Wallace/Bean Dubh a Ghleanna. I’m trying to fit the BDaG words into the Wallace melody. It just might work!
  3. EIGHT part Gusty’s Frolics!

The whole website is beautifully designed. Hats off!

t