Does anyone know the maker of Liam O’s Bb set? I think he may play it on the piper’s call video but I don’t have it.
That’s a Bnat set on the Piper’s Call video. I know he has a D set, C# set (Ennis’s) and a Cnat chanter he uses in concert. I don’t know the makers of all his stuff, though.
djm
D - Leo Rowsome 1936 (commissioned by Sean Reid)
B - Alain Froment 1992
C - Matt Kiernan chanter on Brendan Voyage
C - Quinn 2003 on Planxty DVD
in 1986 i attended a piping workshop in philadelphia that o flynn conducted. at one point during the evening he showed us the reed in his d chanter. he told us that the reed had been made in 1938! the reed was black with dirt on the inside. it sounded beautiful. does anyone know if that reed is still playing?
I was told lately by a very reliable source, that the reed in his D Rowsome chanter he has been playing for the past 17 years?
The source is reliable but I don’t think the reed is. The tone was not quite right in 2/04 when I attended a Planxty concert. An internationally known and well-respected piper in attendance with our group agreed and recognized the reed as probably the old Rowsome reed. LOF has had much better reeds in that chanter of late (“the best reed since Leo Rowsome made reeds” is fairly close to what he has said about a new reed in the past few years) but the main issue is that these were new and relatively unexplored. He knows that Rowsome reed, its nuances, behavior, and limits and precisely what it takes to get what he wants out of it. It is his trusted old friend…just as my 6 year old B. Koehler reed for the K&Q D chanter, a copy of the LOF Rowsome D I might add, has become my old friend.
Liam O’Flynn plays a Bb chanter on the Given Note CD (Tara 1995) Track 1 “An Phis Fhliuch” with Steve Cooney on Didgeridoo.
And he borrowed that off Mick O Brien for the occasion
.
I didn’t know Mick played the Didge… 
So the title of the CD should have been ‘The Borrowed Note’?? 
Stupid question I’m sure but when you say that O’Flynn’s pipes were commisioned by Sean Reid? Did Sean Reid give them to O’Flynn in his will or something to that effect?
P.S. Was at Planxty last night…amazing again as usual
Didn’t he inherit Willie Clancy’s set? Commissioned by Reid, made by Rowsome, owned by Clancy, passed on to O’Flynn?
DavidG
It’s tough to get into specifics with the ‘how did he get them’ but the set is notable since Sean Reid went to Leo and said ‘make me a great set - your best’. Notwithstanding what happened before or after but that set turned out great. I don’t believe that Willie ever had that set.
According to O’Flynn, on the Planxty DVD intro to ‘My Heart’s Tonight in Ireland’, Willie Clancy used to play his (O’Flynns) set - I take it that means he used to own it?
Cheers,
DG
Liam O’Flynn plays a Leo Rowsome Concert set,
Liam also plays Seamus Ennis’s C# set made by Coyne.
He plays a C set, But!, the C chanter he plays on the Piper’s Call is made by Adreas Rogge, and that is Fact, he may also play a Concert D chanter by Adreas Rogge a part from his old Rowsome big bore.
There is also played on the Piper’s Call a Bnat chanter,but I don’t know who the maker is or was,maybe some one can share some ligth on this one,but at a guess, I’d go for Adreas Rogge again. 
dosen’t he play a Bb Froment chanter on the given note (first track)?
I don’t believe so. Extended loan may be the case.
I’m sure I read some were, That Willie Clancy played a "Crawley set, a maker from Cork, before he acquired the Taylor set.
"After that, got to know the County Clare piper, Willie Clancy, who was a very generous person. The pipes that I now play, used to belong to Willie, and they were made by Leo Rowsome in 1936. It’s fitting since my mother originally came from County Clare, from same town as Willie Clancy. " Liam O’Flynn - http://www.npr.org/programs/thistle/features/oflynn_int2.html
Cheers,
DG
God Bless Liam O’Flynn for being out there and being such an unrepentant Piper (capital P!) for so many years.
I’m still waiting to hear him do “The Fox Chase” on the Ennis pipes without the orchestra tho’. Not Ennis’s version, not Felix’s, and not Leo’s, just Liam’s version…his ideas about each segment and their meanings. Without the bloody orchestra, puhleezzzz.
That piece deserves to be played well and without faults and appreciated as the masterpiece it truly is - the fox chase is not about hunting foxes, if you didn’t grasp that little tidbit already. Use your overdeveloped simian brains and your emotionally stunted hearts and listen again to Seamus playing it on 40 Years or Return From Fingal and tell me if there’s even one whiff of bullshit in Seamus’s rendering. I don’t think there is. But I might be full of crap, too. If you think Leo’s or Felix’s version were better let me know why you think so.
I’m not about to argue, I just want to hear what others think and feel about this strange and lovely piece.