I don’t listen to jazz much, and I hadn’t heard of Rufus Harley before, but I do appreciate good music.
Wow. Rufus Harley is the real deal. Thanks, oleorezinator.
Why are those who disagree with your assessment of Rufus always slandered:
“anyone who can’t appeciate this is the usual stuck up hating fool” (from the YouTube comments)
“dire, po-faced classical piping point of view”
“anachronistic musical necrology”
Beyond me.
the thread began as a question about improvising music in the various dance forms.
Dynamics? Depends on yer definition please clarify.
I listened to your suggestions and the link and came away like the last time I’d heard them.
Fine players but no jazz improv there. Lots of noodling but no jazz.
This was the question - “can you play, note for note, his solo from “Eight Miles High”? (its a toughie- warnin ya!)”
I said "“no highland piper ever could conceive” - wow, derogatory! -Martyn Bennett, Fraser Fifield and many more?
Edit: - do you think this guys “couldn’t conceive”
You don’t think Fraser Fifield plays jazz? He’s a highly respected jazz as well as trad player. The guitarist he’s playing with was last years Scottish jazz musician of the year.
Look up “dynamics” in a musical context.
Anyway, let’s not ruin the thread by us batting back and forward, we won’t agree on this if we wait for hell to freeze over 
I think Harley’s real problem is that his music (which I happen to like, a lot) appears technically wayward to any devotee of the instrument. But a lot of jazz musicians have had this issue - Thelonious Monk was widely criticised as a pianist and even as an improviser, but is still one of the greats. Like Harley he was a uniquely expressive and creative player within his technical limitations; perhaps even because of them. A lot of jazz saxophone players, never mind classical ones, never rated Coltrane’s ideas or his tone - including my own sax teacher (he was a great teacher but I couldn’t agree with him on that one, even as a callow thirteen year old). Harley’s playing (to me) is clearly warm, humorous, soulful and a lot of other things the average non-bagpiper wouldn’t immediately associate with the instrument…but if you don’t particularly care for the music itself then the technique is going to stick out like a sore thumb, much like with Monk.
The overcoming of technical limitations by passion, soul and a lot of love for the instrument’s sound is after all what made Ennis continue to be a great piper even after the alcohol really started to take its toll. There are a lot of pipers now who are technically miles ahead of late-period Ennis, never mind my own stumbling efforts, but sound terribly sterile for all their speed and clean execution.
I still reckon true improvised music could be played on the uilleann pipes though…if the ramshackle assortment of classical and military band instruments that make up the average jazz group can do it then I’m sure the offspring of a baroque parlour instrument can! Just needs the right person to come along, with the right disregard for rhythmic, as much as harmonic, preconceptions. As long as it doesn’t degenerate into “Celtic” mood music.
Yes, I agree with you Myles, improvised music such as jazz can for sure by played on the pipes. Like I said earlier, you’re limited due to the lack of dynamics but that doesn’t mean it can’t be and hasn’t often been done successfully.
It would probably help if the OP said what his meaning was - improvisation within a traditional music format or within other genres, as it makes quite a difference to the direction of the thread.
“Ramshackle?”
I don’t think you could call piano, drums, upright bass, trumpet, sax, trombone, or guitar that! Those instruments have been “perfected.” They are not IMO, in the same category as the pipes by a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng shot.
Rufus Harley had his own “thing” going on… It s not in my Favourites but I can hear that his piping was far from orthodox.
Aside from the RH debate my own personal opinion is that Uilleann pipes have yet to be played in a convincing Jazz style( other then perhaps avant garde stuff) .
What I have heard just sounds really contrived and well… Crap.
I came to Uilleann piping from a Jazz background with many years as a Jazz performer on a variety of instruments.
I never felt that the UPs were the kind of instrument to play in the Jazz idiom. I have tried and well… It just didn’t work.
So it’s all down to personal opinion… My take is that Bluegrass trombone combo is novel but not something that does it for me … Neither does the Death Metal shakuhachi for that matter.
People offer to send me to Siberia all the time! 
Interesting thread. But I’m still not sure what the OP was asking. 
Whoa! 
I was gone for a little while, and all these interesting debates and observations POPPED out of nowhere! 
I will try (or maybe not 
) to clear it up.
A couple people had it. I was basically asking if you can play in a freestyle, freeform, make-up-stuff-as-you-go-ish kind of way in certain musical timing measures associated with Jigs, reels, or hornpipes. Not necessarily Jazz. (I forgot to clarify that stuff… Whoops!)
But it seems you understood what I was saying your first post. (Stuff like composing on the spot) And I was just wondering if this was a popular practice.
I hoped this cleared some things up…
I agree with you a gizillion percent! My RH factor was only
that he took an instrument of EXTREMELY
limited compass and made it work for his
style of playing jazz. That said, thinking about
Jazz, let’s say from the stuff that was played
right before bebop came in, up to and including
“the new thing” as it was called i.e. John Coltrane,
Miles Davis Quartet on any instruments outside of the
norm that was really compelling? I’m excluding the
violin which there were plenty of playing the swing thing,
way too few playing bebop and plenty more playing the
new thing and jazz rock fusion. For what I’ve heard
the oboe as played by the likes of Yuseff Lateef,
Paul McCandless and Jean-Luc Fillon goes in that
direction but definitely the bassoon playing of
these guys puts it right in that direction.
Paul Hanson-Jazz Bassoon-Donna Lee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuYE5G1C9MQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Illinois Jacquet on Bassoon 1969 ~ 'Round Midnight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjdrBrAA49k&feature=youtube_gdata_player
All the things You Are - Alexandre Silverio Trio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-hjAeZHoB4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Rino Vernizzi plays Giant Steps (John Coltrane)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jnpjk0N4xc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
There’s always the emergency situation we all dread where you’re making shyte up out of the blue because you forgot what you intended to play, no other “real” tune elbowed its way in, and stopping to think about it is not an option because the dancers are dancing away…and in that case I can answer, “Yes”. And it’s a cliffhanger, all right; not only for the performer, but also if you’re in the audience and hip to the drama going on. Half of you wants to see it succeed splendidly, and the other half with the little red horns is craning his neck to see what the trainwreck will look like.
But to me that sort of improv is not a pipes issue per se; that’s a musicianship issue. I’ve seen fiddlers have to do it, too, and fluters (um…me, for example). The challenge in trad contexts where the seasoned listener is accustomed to general tune layout patterns, is to make your off-the-cuff foray sound as if it’s a composed tune, not just random nurbling.
But I see that the OP has returned and clarified things, asking do we ever nurble.
I’d have to fiercely disagree there.
Yeah, I have to say that I’ve always considered the uilleann pipes a consummate solo instrument.
interesting conversation. I’ve always enjoyed someone doing something non-traditional with traditional instruments, but that’s me.
ennischanter, what do you fiercely disagree with? That the uilleann pipes have no dynamics or that having no dynamics is limiting?
Just to clarify, at that stage of the conversation we were talking about soloing as in a jazz type context. Taking my comment in isolation makes it look like I was talking about improvisation in general - that wasn’t the case.
To the earlier poster who picked up on my use of the word “ramshackle”, I meant a ramshackle assortment, not ramshackle instruments. Jazz instruments have a variety of origins and all have been used - or repurposed - to play a form of improvised music. For all their imperfections the uilleann pipes could probably be used in a jazz context - if the right player appears, which they haven’t yet (they’d have to discard nearly all the rhythmic aspects of trad to make it sound convincing, or at least as convincing as Harley).
An improvised music not bound by jazz conventions should be possible too, bearing in mind that the pipes are at best imperfectly chromatic. But again the person with the right combination of skills has yet to appear. Perhaps because pipes are not easily obtainable, cheap or even consistent. Under those circumstances I’m not surprised that Evan Parkers or Brotzmanns or Braxtons of the pipes world are a bit thin on the ground!
I guess there’s a lot of room for a kind of improvisation in trad, of the ‘theme and variations’ form certainly. I wonder if the ‘competition’ format at the centre of a lot of formalized trad education discourages it, tends to standardize playing. I know this is an old debate in GHB circles as well, mind…
Shred just dosent impress me anymore. I’ve played enough of it to understand that its a musical dead end. Where is Monti’s 2nd Czardas? Paganinni’s 25th caprice?
Once the ‘gee-whiz’ factor is spent, there is not much left to chew on. 
Whatever strict Highland pipers think of Rufus technique, credit must be given him for opening a world of possibilities. Every single “by-the-rules,competing or not” PipeBand in my circle today has some connection to a rock band, ceilidh band, or some small combo with pipes. Rufus played the chanter with left-handed recorder fingering. It is my understanding that; despite repeated attempts to solicit lessons from trad trained Highland pipers; he was mostly ignored.
Therefore for me, strict highland players griping about his lack of technique have no one but themselves to blame. It was due only a goodhearted Canadian gent, that Rufus was even supplied with the quality equipment and accessories of that time.
In many ways we see today a controversy long overdue for the bagpipe: To either perfect the pure line of descent for tradition by enforcing strict rules of musical conduct and graded sucess for the amusement of up & coming generations; OR reach out for new sounds and search for new applications and situations to ensure the instruments relevance in a constantly changing global musical landscape? Its a good thing, for all, to have this push &pull ! May neither side prevail!
However,
Ive come accross very few (as in zero) ‘progressive’ bagpipers that cant/dont/wont appreciate the heights of traditional practices. Conversely, it is the rare trad expert that openly endorses approval of experimental piping. Even at the highest levels there is a certain…unspoken reserve. In a reply to the extreme sentiments expressed by strict trad ghb players, I put it to the forum that what passes for innovation today is nothing but pure, shallow shred. Even Gordon Walker gettin jiggy over 6 beats in the last phrase of “Jig of Slurs”, is not real improvisation. Thunderstruck, Hellbound Train & that ilk, are only cadenzas of hyperornamentation. Having certainly done more than my fair share of shred, I say to all you young piping geniuses (and I have no qualms saying this f2f)…shred wont fill the bill. See beyond it. It is a phase you must go through in order to create more meaningful, lasting, more fullfilling, touching, ‘epoch-ryphal’, content.
Like it or not, there is more than one way to ‘skin a bagpipe’.