Elliot Grasso will be performing/competing on “A Prairie Home Companion” today.
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/performances/20040508/finalists/#grasso
You can hear his audition on the site too.
PHC is broadcast from the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Theatre is named after F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived right by the College of Visual Arts, location of next week’s Great Northern Irish Pipers’ Club Tionol! 
t
Hey Tom. I used to live just a few doors down from the school of visual arts…in the building directly across Summit ave from the Volkfest Kulturhaus(sp).
Sorry, but I will be unable to attend this years tionol. This last semester has stressed me out way too much. Gonna hang with the wife and the dog on Sanibel Island…on a beach…under an umbrella…playing the pipes…a nice cool pint at my elbow…but not too close, wouldn’t want to knock it over 
.
Good luck and have a blast up there in the land of 10 gazillion lakes!
I just listened to Eliot’s performance on PHC a few minutes ago. Far be it from me to dis’ on someone who is ten times the player I’ll ever be, but I couldn’t follow his performance at all. He said he was going to be playing a set of jigs (of his own composition). While the beginning started out jig-like, I swear half-way through the first tune he went into reel time. Not like “he was playing real fast” reel time, I mean I was counting 1234 1234 reel time. But then it would sound like jig time for a few bars. Then back again. Like I said I just couldn’t follow the tunes. I think on the last tune he was trying to play syncopations like are popular with Highland pipe bands nowadays, but for some reason, it doesn’t come off as well on uilleans as on highland pipes. I noticed this to a lesser extent on some recordings I’ve heard of him. I think maybe it’s because he prefers a very even style of playing. Its just so even that I find it hard to hear the beat. On the other hand, if you listen to his audition on the website where he’s playing traditional tunes, he’s brilliant. Maybe he’s trying to do something in his originals that is just beyond me. Anyway, it’s unfortunate he didn’t play a trad set on the show, as I think the audience was a little baffled as well.
James
I’ll have to catch the rebroadcast Sunday morning.
FYI -
Grasso will be the lead teacher at this years Irish Week @ the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, WVA.
He was an assistant teacher in 2001, the year I went.
…
-those are 3 reels, played
on a concert pitch set.
Boyd
zap
Uh, and just where is that College of Visual Arts located? Don’t say “Saint Paul” or I’ll hit you over the head with a very sturdy Bob May chanter made out of the stuff you make fake-marble sinks from.
And by the way, Grasso is THE next Paddy Keenan. Any criticism about playing fast or even is simply a criticism against playing “properly.” If you can’t “hear the beat” it’s because there are “too many notes” and the “human mind simply can’t comprehend them all,” and you deserve to die an ingnominious musical death at the earliest possible convenience.
Royce
Uhm, no Royce, tell me how you really feel buddy.
I think Elliot did well, but he chose a set of jigs that was not very inspiring. Unfortunately the other competitors did very well, especially Brooks Robertson (who played 10 times better than he had in his audition IMHO) and Sahara Smith (simply an amazing singer). Even though he didn’t win, it was nice to see the UP being featured.
I think Paddy Keenan is the next Paddy Keenan, but Elliot is doing fine!
Listened to that segment again and one of the problems with those tunes was, as noted, some fairly uninspired composition, but mostly the microphone placement, which was apparently too close to or to favoring of the bell, so the barrage of bottom D’s that kept honking out in the middle of all those triplet arpeggio-forms at syncopated places, was way way too prominent and broke up the feel of the jig.
The observation that it was reminiscent of GHB jig styling, or at least modern GHB jig compostition was very correct, and there are a lot of jigs written and played by hot Highland pipers that deliberately tangle any sense of melody for extended periods and then come up to a fairly comprehensible ending phrase, only to leap off to another obscure tangle off melodic rambling until the next wrap-up phrase can be recognized.
Played solo there is no blatant feel of time signature sometimes, but these tunes are intended to be played with a full drum corps, and with any sort of rhythmic accompaniment, Highland or uilleann, the pipe melody suddenly makes a lot more sense.
I listened hard and he did in a couple of places get ahead or behind himself timing-wise, rushing or dragging particularly difficult or easy parts respectively, but he never lost a beat or shorted/dragged one so aggregiously as to call it a fumble, it’s just that the odd melodic structure of the tunes he wrote don’t at all help point out the downbeats at all, so if you aren’t hearing them from some other source, it’s way too easy to get lost.
Royce
There is no next Paddy Keenan, as countless talented young pipers continue to prove by trying to ape the man, only ending up sounding like a Flatbush pizzaiolo with a bad head cold reading Chaucer.
And that’s “egregiously”, chief.
Thanks for the speling hellp. We all noe that’s what the internet is all about, getting speling tipps. Ovbiously yore a very litteral persun and have know consepshum of cymballick illusions ore mettiforical languish.
Sew letts jest sai heze thuh nixxed playur en ae ruffly oppenesh stile sumthing laik Patty Keaning or sownding lick thaght “travailler” styil.
Roiz
That’s some funny, funny stuff. I feel so small.
Why does there have to be another Paddy Keenan? Why not the next whomever? One Paddy Keenan is perfect, I am certain Paddy would agree.
That’s more information than I needed to know.
Royce
Keep yer hands to yerself!
djm
Once again, Royce, absolutely hilarious. This kind of cutting-edge repartee should really be shopped out to, say, Adam Sandler or maybe Carrot Top.
I wonder what Patsy Touhey would say about that. The more I listen to Patsy Touhey, the more Paddy Keennan sounds like Touhey with better fidelity and tempo control.
Compare thier versions of Harvest Home.
I wish I could sound like either one…